Russia to retaliate befittingly to US sanctions

Russia has announced that it would give a cutthroat response to the US levelling sanctions against it in the wake of developments in Eastern Europe.

A “strong” and “painful” response would ensue to American sanctions, warned the Russian government on Wednesday. According to the CNN, in a statement, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Moscow would target “sensitive” US assets and that sanctions against Russia were a part of US efforts to “change Russia’s course”.

The statement noted that sanctions would not deter Russia’s resolve to defend its interests.

In the latest on US actions against Russia, US President Joe Biden has announced sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, a Swiss firm with a Russian parent company Gazprom. The sanctions would impact the company’s corporate officers as well.

Earlier, the US slapped a slew of sanctions on Russia, which President Biden called the first iteration of restrictions against Moscow. The sanctions would be imposed on two major Russian banks, said the US president in a speech on Tuesday, which would curb their ability to finance sovereign debt. According to AP, the sanctions would also involve targeting Russian civilian leadership and the banks being targeted held over $80 billion in assets.

Meanwhile, multiple media outlets reported that Ukraine declared a nationwide state of emergency on Wednesday after the parliament voted to approve it into effect. The emergency declaration came the same day that Moscow followed through on its plan to evacuate its diplomats from Ukrainian soil – an act that has raised fears that a war against Ukraine was imminent.

The same day, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications reported that an expansive cyber-attack hit Ukrainian websites, which were hit with denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. DoS attacks typically overwhelm websites with traffic to cause a disturbance to the its operations and knock it offline.

According to nonprofit company NetBlocks, the websites hit included Ukraine’s ministries of defense and internal affairs and other civilian websites. Several banking websites were also impacted by the attacks.

Earlier on February 16, Ukrainian websites were attacked in similar DoS attacks. The banking websites of two largest Ukrainian banks were temporarily knocked offline. With regards to the attack the US White House had claimed that its intelligence found Russia to be behind the attacks.

Furthermore, according to Newsweek, President Biden has informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that it had intelligence that Russia was primed for attack within the next 48 hours.

A US official was quoted by the outlet as having said that aircraft observers hinted that Russia had charted into Ukrainian airspace earlier on Wednesday. A source from President Zelensky’s administration also confirmed to Newsweek that such a warning was heeded, but added that Ukraine had received these warnings thrice in the last month.