World press on Ukrainian crisis (April 26-27)

Newsweek published an article by Leah McGrath Goodman and Lynnley Browning headlined "The Art of Financial Warfare: How the West Is Pushing Putin’s Buttons."

 

"It was midday on March 20 when the executive, sitting at his office computer in Geneva, glanced up at the screen and got a jolt: A tweet had popped up saying one of the company’s founders, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire Russian businessman, had been placed on a U.S. government blacklist, along with 31 other people and businesses said to be linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin," the article begins.

 

“Fifteen years ago, the idea that the Treasury Department would be at the center of our national security would have been inconceivable,” Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary for terrorist financing at the Treasury, is quoted by the authors as saying in an interview. “But we have developed a whole new set of tools to put at the president’s disposal.”

 

According to Newsweek, the control room in this new kind of war is a unit inside the U.S. Treasury Department: the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) with 730 staff members.

 

"Don’t let the name fool you. This little-known branch of the Treasury, created by Congress in the wake of the September 11 attacks, isn’t just going after terrorists or hunting illicit offshore money flows anymore. It is using sophisticated financial weaponry to hit carefully chosen targets linked to hostile governments," the authors inform.

 

According to the authors, the TFI was responsible for drawing up the blacklist, which sought to paralyze the financial dealings of Putin’s inner circle as Russian troops advanced on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. In Russia, the Treasury’s assault has led to severe disruptions in the financial affairs of blacklist targets such as Timchenko, as well as Bank Rossiya, a mid-sized St. Petersburg bank catering to senior Russian government officials, which has around $10 billion of assets and which found its Visa and MasterCard services abruptly halted and its credit downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, the authors of the article inform.

 

"Secretary of State John Kerry laid out the case for additional American sanctions on Russia for promoting instability in Ukraine, warning on Thursday that Russia’s “window to change course is closing” before sanctions are imposed on its economy," an article entitled "Kerry Lays Out Case Against Russia as U.S. Readies New Sanctions" published by Time reads.

 

Adopting the tone of a prosecutor, Kerry detailed the interim Ukrainian government’s compliance with last week’s Geneva agreement to de-escalate the situation, the author of the article Zeke Miller writes.

 

“Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction,” the Secretary of State is quoted by Time as saying. "Kerry firmly laid out alleged Russian actions in eastern Ukraine, from deploying special-operations forces and spies in plainclothes to funding and arming separatist groups," Miller writes.

 

“Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception and destabilization. What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized,” Secretary Kerry is quoted as saying.

 

For weeks American officials have been preparing to impose additional sanctions on Russia if it does not reverse course, working to reassure reluctant European allies that broad-based sanctions on sectors of Russia’s economy may be necessary despite the costs to their own economies, the author of the article informs.

 

On Thursday in Japan, President Barack Obama said sanctions against Russia were now “teed up” but did not specify what specific sanctions may be imposed. Earlier this month, Obama signed an Executive Order authorizing sanctions should they be needed on Russia’s financial services, energy, mining, defense and engineering sectors, Time informs.