mobilizing for military aggression against ukraine. we ve made clear that if russia invaded, the united states and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe consequences. now that russia has moved against ukraine, so, too, have we moved on our strong and unified response. this afternoon, the president announced the first round of sanctions on russia in response to its actions. these have been closely coordinated with our allies and partners. we ll continue to escalate our sanctions if russia escalates its aggression toward ukraine. today, we re implementing full blocking sanctions on two large russian financial institutions. the veb and the bank. both of which have close links to the kremlin and russian military. collectively, they hold more than $80 billion in assets. these measures will freeze their assets in the united states, prohibit american individuals or businesses from doing any
and building a response that would have massive consequences for russia. russia has clearly chosen to reject diplomacy and dialogue and instead to pursue aggression. as a consequence, we have started to have the severe consequences that we said would follow. today, faced with the beginning of russia s invasion of ukraine, we started high and we ll stay high. the sanctions that we ve already announced go well beyond what we did. veb and the military bank. they hold more than $80 billion in assets. they provide key service that s are critical to financing the kremlin and russian military. we have comprehensive sanctions against russian sovereign debt. that mean we re cutting off the russian government from western
all 27 eu member nations unanimously imposed sweeping restrictions against russia, or to use president biden s words, carving out a big chunk of ukraine. the big sanctions differ between the three groups, but the broad strokes are the same. all of them sanction russian banks, elite russian individuals. and the u.s. is fully sanctioning two of russia s banks, veb, and russia s military bank psb, the military bank alone handles 70% of russia s defense contracts and it s the smaller of the two banks. the u.s. is also sanctioning a handful of elite russian individuals. and cutting off u.s. financing the russian sovereign debt. in addition to the sanctions imposed by the uk and eu, germany delivered what might be the biggest economic blow
this is a flagrant violation of international law and it demands a firm response from the international community. we re implementing full blocking sanctions on two large russian financial institutions. veb and their military bank. we re implementing comprehensive sanctions on russian sovereign debt. starting tomorrow and continuing in the days ahead, we ll also impose sanctions on russia s elites can their family members. they share in the corrupt games of the kremlin policies and should share in the pain as well. senior administration official elaborated telling cnn, quote, this is the beginning of an invasion, and therefore, this is the beginning of our response. secretary of state blinken appearing alongside ukraine s foreign minister said thursday s meeting with his russian counterpart is off. he cancelled a meeting with sergei lavrov, saying russia has not been serious about diplomacy but left the door open if it might prevent all-out war.
mobilizing for military aggression against ukraine. we ve made clear that if russia invaded, the united states and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe consequences. now that russia has moved against ukraine, so, too, have we moved on our strong and unified response. this afternoon the president announced the first round of sanctions on russia in response to its actions. these have been closely coordinated with our allies and partners. we will continue to escalate our sanctions if russia escalates its aggression toward ukraine tafrl we re implementing full blocking sanctions on two russian financial institutions. veb and the bank. both of which have close links to the kremlin and russian military. collectively, they hold more than $80 billion in assets. these measures will freeze their assets in the united states, prohibit american individuals or