New sanctions to help isolate Putin after Bucha horror

Russians using hunger as weapon of war, says Zelensky

- Nicholas Cecil

BRITAIN and allies in the West were today moving to further isolate and choke off finance to Vladimir Putin’s regime as the world responded to the horrors of Bucha.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was expected to announced new sanctions, possibly as early as today.

Proposed EU sanctions will ban buying Russian coal, prevent Russian ships from entering EU ports, and suspend nearly 20 billion euros (£16.6 billion) worth of trade.

European Council president Charles Michel said: “We are toughening our sanctions to keep maximum pressure on the Kremlin. The new package includes a ban on coal imports and I think that measures on oil, and even gas, will also be needed sooner or later.”

The tougher sanctions are being co-ordinated between America, Britain and the EU. But Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to go further in tightening the vice on the Putin regime for its barbaric invasion, the biggest assault on a European nation since the Second World War.