SYDNEY: The Australian government has imposed sanctions and travel bans on two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s daughter, it said in a statement on Friday.
It follows similar measures undertaken by other Western nations including the United States and Britain, and takes the total number of people and entities in Russia subject to Australian sanctions to nearly 750.
It did not name the two Putin daughters but the Russian president is known to have two adult daughters, Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova. The statement added President Putin and Lavrov were added to the sanctions list on Feb. 27.
The fresh round of sanctions also targets 144 Russian senators who provided support to President Putin by approving the “illegitimate” recognition as independent the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Feb. 22, Australia’s foreign ministry said in its statement.
Foreign Minister Marisa Payne added that Australia will continue to increase costs on Russia by targeting those who bear responsibility for the “unjustified and unprovoked aggression in Ukraine.” Russia calls its invasion a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine.
Last week, Australia imposed targeted financial sanctions on 14 Russian state-owned enterprises, including defense-related entities such as truckmaker Kamaz and shipping companies SEVMASH and United Shipbuilding Corp.
Australia targets Putin’s daughters, Russian senators in fresh sanctions
https://arab.news/9rxxt
Australia targets Putin’s daughters, Russian senators in fresh sanctions
- Russian president is known to have two adult daughters, Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova
Poland slow to counter Russia’s ‘existential threat’: general
- The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size
- Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039
WARSAW: Russia poses an “existential threat” to Poland and its military is lagging, the country’s armed forces chief warned senior officials on Wednesday.
Poland, the largest country on NATO’s eastern flank and a neighbor of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, is the western alliance’s largest spender in relative terms.
This year, the country is allocating 4.8 percent of its GDP to defense, just shy of the alliance’s five percent target to be met by 2035.
However, that record defense spending was not enough to “make up for nearly three decades of chronic underfunding of the armed forces,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff, argued at the meeting, which included top officers, the defense minister and Poland’s president.
The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size.
Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039, compared with around 210,000 at present.
As a result of a lack of updates, some new Polish units “are not achieving combat readiness,” due to insufficient equipment, rather than a personnel shortage, the general argued.
Meanwhile, he added, “the Russian Federation remains an existential threat to Poland.”
Russia “is constantly reorganizing its forces, drawing on the lessons from its aggression in Ukraine, and building up the capacity for a conventional conflict with NATO countries,” he stressed.
Poland is to receive 43.7 billion euros ($51,5 billion) in loans under the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme, designed to strengthen Europe’s defensive capabilities.
Warsaw plans to use these funds to boost domestic arms production.
The Polish government claims that Poland will be able to access SAFE finance even if President Karol Nawrocki — backed by Poland’s conservative-nationalist opposition — vetos a law setting out domestic arrangements for its implementation.
Law and Justice (PiS) — the main opposition party — argues that SAFE could become a new tool for Brussels to place undue pressure on Poland, thanks to a planned mechanism for monitoring the funds, which they claim risks undermining Polish sovereignty.
