President Joe Biden Announces Sanctions on Russia Amid Escalating Tensions With Ukraine

President Joe Biden is making an announcement about the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The President of the United States made a speech on Tuesday (February 22), discussing how the U.S. is responding to the growing belief that Vladimir Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine.

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The President announced sanctions against Russia, following Putin‘s announcement of two regions of Ukraine as independent republics.

“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he said, adding that “if Russia goes further with this invasion, we stand prepared to go further as with sanctions.”

The first “tranche” of sanctions would be on two Russian financial institutions, as well as Russian sovereign debt, which means that the country can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade debt on U.S. and European markets, via Deadline. He also said that sanctions would be imposed on Russian elites and their family members.

“Yesterday, the world heard clearly the full extent of Vladimir Putin’s twisted rewrite of history,” he said, adding that there is still time for diplomacy to avoid a “worst case scenario.”

“As I said last week, defending freedom will have costs for us as well and here at home. We need to be honest about that. But as we do this, I’m going to take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at [the] Russian economy, not ours,” he said.

“We’re closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing a plan in coordination with major oil-producing consumers and producers toward a collective investment to secure stability in global energy supplies. This will blunt gas prices,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Germany halted the Nord Stream 2, a pipeline set to bring natural gas from Russia to Western Europe.

Find out what the President previously said about the ongoing tensions.