The West should tighten sanctions against Russia and provide Kyiv with long-range missiles in response to Moscow's latest shelling of Ukraine, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Wednesday (Jan. 3).
Russia pounded Ukraine's two biggest cities on Tuesday (Jan. 2) in a new wave of heavy air strikes that killed at least five civilians and prompted calls for the West to quickly provide more military assistance.
Poland's Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski urged the Western allies to come up with a firm response to the Kremlin.
"We should respond to the latest onslaught on Ukraine in language that Putin understands: by tightening sanctions so that he cannot make new weapons with smuggled components and by giving Kyiv long range missiles that will enable it to take out launch sites and command centers," Sikorski wrote on social media platform X.
The European Union has added Russia's Alrosa, the world's biggest diamond producer, as well as its CEO Pavel Alekseevich Marinychev to its sanctions list, it said on Wednesday.
"In line with the diamond ban we have introduced with the 12th package of sanctions, the EU today lists Alrosa, the largest diamond-mining company in the world, and its CEO," EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on social media platform X.
The EU's diamond ban is done in coordination with the Group of Seven countries (G7), which announced a similar ban in December.
In an earlier post on X, Borrell assured that "Russia will be held to account for its war crimes". "Russia started the new year by shooting over a hundred of missiles and drones at Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities, targeting civilians, destroying residential neighbourhoods and life-supporting infrastructure."
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Tuesday (January 2) Russia had used almost 300 missiles and more than 200 drones in attacks over the last three days.
Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said the latest attacks were intended to cause maximum destruction.
Russia stepped up missile and drone strikes on December 29, when it launched its largest air attack of the war, killing at least 39 people. Kyiv had warned for weeks that Russia appeared to be stockpiling missiles for big attacks.
Russia holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and there is no end in sight to the war as next month's second anniversary of Moscow's full-scale invasion approaches.
Russia depicts a Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in mid-2023 as a failure. Front lines have changed little in recent months.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, PAP, Reuters
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: OLEG PETRASYUK/PAP/EPA