Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that the EU will fund the purchase of weapons for Ukraine.
At a press conference with High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, von der Leyen said the bloc would also impose additional sanctions on Russia and Belarus, Reuters reported.
“For the first time ever, the EU will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack”, she declared while also noting that Russian aircraft will not be allowed to enter EU airspace.
Additionally, the EU is to ban Russian state-owned media, including Russia Today and Sputnik, a move, von der Leyen stressed, that is aimed at preventing Moscow from spreading “lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our Union.”
Moscow claims that its invasion of Ukraine is not aimed at achieving occupation, but rather is intended to result in the capture of what it describes as dangerous nationalists.
As for Belarus, the EU plans to impose bans on imports of products from the country, EU officials having noted that the latest sanctions come on top of measures that were already in place.
“Another taboo has fallen”, Borrell observed, identifying it as “the taboo that the EU was not providing arms in a war.”
An EC source indicates that the EU is to spend 450 million euro on weapons and 50 million on medical supplies for Ukraine.
Anti-war protests continue
Meanwhile, anti-war protests in Russia continued on Sunday, with police detaining more than 1,700 protesters in 46 cities, according to the OVD-Info anti-persecution group.
The group claims that that the Russian authorities have detained roughly 5,500 people since the start of the war, DW reports.
Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has announced that Ankara is invoking the Montreaux Convention, which allows Turkey to ban warships from access to the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits if threatened and in wartime.
Russian warships are not allowed to access the straits connecting the Black and Mediterranean Seas, he said, now that Moscow has invaded Ukraine.
The latest UN count is that the number of Ukrainians who have fled the country now exceeds 368,000. This represents a doubling of the number of refugees in just one day.
