Biden assails Russian claims of annexation in Ukraine, levels new sanctions

President Biden pelted Russia with sanctions on Friday after President Vladimir Putin signed sham treaties nominally annexing four provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine, plunging global tensions over the seven-month-old invasion to a new low.

The sweeping American sanctions target 278 members of the Russian Parliament, a trio of Russian financial leaders — including the governor of the Central Bank of Russia — and family members of Russian officials, according to the Treasury Department. More than 900 Russians faced new visa restrictions, the U.S. said.

The Kremlin’s attempted annexation came with Russia reeling on the battlefield following a lightning advance by Ukraine in the north. Putin delivered a fiery speech on Friday, accusing the West of a “colonial” mentality and declaring that people in the four regions of Ukraine were “becoming our citizens forever.”

“We are going to defend our country,” Putin said. “The West is hoping that they will remain unpunished.”

His annexation bid, backed by bogus referendums overseen by Russian soldiers, is the largest attempted military landgrab on European soil since World War II, according to NATO, covering almost one-sixth of Ukraine’s territory.

“The United States is never going to recognize this, and quite frankly the world is not going to recognize it either,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

Biden pledged to continue to arm Ukraine and said he looked forward to approving $12 billion in aid for the beleaguered nation included in a stopgap funding bill that passed the House on Friday.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, spoke with NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, on Friday about the annexation bid by Russia, according to the White House. And Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had signed an application for expedited entry into NATO, a process that the U.S. said should wait.

In a news conference at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Stoltenberg said Europe has met a “pivotal moment,” describing Russia’s recent moves as “the most serious escalation since the start of the war.”

“None of this shows strength — it shows weakness,” Stoltenberg said. “Putin has utterly failed in his strategic objectives. Putin bears full responsibility for this war. And it is his responsibility to end it.”

Putin has portrayed NATO as a terminal threat to his country, and cited concerns about Ukraine joining the 30-nation military alliance as a justification for Russia’s bloody attack on its western neighbor.

In recent days, the Russian president has issued thinly veiled threats about a nuclear response to any efforts to battle for the regions of Ukraine he now claims. Sullivan has said Russia would face “catastrophic consequences” if the Kremlin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“There is a risk given all of the loose talk and the nuclear saber rattling by Putin that he would consider this,” Sullivan acknowledged at a news conference on Friday. “We’ve been equally clear about what the consequences would be. We have communicated that directly to the Russians.”

He added that the U.S. has not seen indications of imminent use of nuclear weapons by Russia.

The recent rhetoric amounts to an alarming escalation in tension between Washington and Moscow. Dialogue between the two nations largely ruptured after Putin sent his army on a failed mission to seize Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, in February.

Now, Putin has laid claim to a bridge of provinces connecting Russia with Crimea, the peninsula on Ukraine’s south that Russia seized in 2014. The attempted landgrab covers the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

American sanctions uncorked in response to Russia’s moves targeted Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina, governor of the Central Bank of Russia, and Olga Nikolaevna Skorobogatova, her first deputy, according to the Treasury Department.

Brian O’Toole, a former sanctions official at the Treasury Department, said the American response was “proportional” but not “earth-shattering,” adding that its scale showed the U.S. had been planning it for an extended period of time.

“You don’t just whip out this number of names overnight,” O’Toole said. “There’s a lot of bureaucratic work that goes into this kind of an action.”

The relationship between Washington and Moscow, he said, appeared to have sunk to its worst state since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said in a statement that the U.S. would not “stand by as Putin fraudulently attempts to annex parts of Ukraine.”

And Biden said the West will stand together against the Kremlin’s claims.

“America and its allies are not going to be intimidated by Putin,” Biden said in his White House remarks. “He can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it. It’s as simple as that.”