Zimpapers Logo

MOSCOW. – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that scraps simplified visa rules for officials and journalists from so-called unfriendly countries.

According to the decree, officials and journalists from some European Union countries as well as those from Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein will no longer be able to apply for visas to Russia through a simplified procedure. The decree took effect on Monday.

The state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported that Putin’s decree ends visa-free entry for EU citizens who hold diplomatic passports.

Putin has also instructed the Foreign Ministry to decide on imposing entry bans on foreigners or stateless people who “commit unfriendly acts” against Russia, with the action including legal entities, the agency reported.

Russia’s list of unfriendly countries includes those in the European Union, the United States, Britain, Canada and Ukraine, among others. The list was expanded after the West levied punishing sanctions on Moscow.

Russia and Ukraine were continuing negotiations but there remains a long way to go, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday.

“There is still quite a long road ahead … The working process is continuing, but more viscously than we want,” Peskov told a daily briefing, stressing that Moscow would like Kiev to be more active during the negotiations.

The withdrawal of Russian troops from the Kiev region was to facilitate the peace talks, he told France’s LCI broadcaster earlier in the day.

On the diplomatic front, some Arab countries have expressed a willingness to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said at a news conference in Moscow on Monday.

Foreign ministers of Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan and Sudan met on Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Ahmed Aboul Gheit, secretary-general of the Arab League, also joined the meeting. The ministers were due to travel to Poland for talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Russia has removed about two-thirds of the troops it had around Kyiv, mostly sent back to Belarus with plans to redeploy elsewhere in Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official said.

“They have about a third left of the forces that they had arrayed against Kyiv,” the official said on grounds of anonymity.

The Russian military has said it is now focusing its efforts on the eastern Donbass region.

According to Russian state news agency TASS, the United States plans to hold a session of the UN General Assembly on Russia’s participation in the UN Human Rights Council as soon as today.

Russia has rejected claims that its army was behind atrocities against civilians in Bucha amid widespread international outrage, claiming the footage was staged following Russian forces’ retreat from the area. Russian officials including Lavrov have repeated claims that the footage from Bucha was staged possibly with Western involvement.

To keep the Russia-Ukraine crisis a long way from ending is a clear goal of the US and Western countries as the US and the EU are considering more sanctions against Russia after the unverified alleged “war crimes” in Bucha were exposed. 

Analysts said that sanctions will not end the crisis but would bring huge harm to both the EU and Russia, especially Germany, the biggest EU economy. 

The US will benefit the most, and this would be a big and hard test for EU leaders on how to balance the economy and handle the ongoing crisis, they said.

The plan to increase sanctions is dividing the West since Germany, the biggest economy of the EU, is heavily reliant on energy imports from Russia. 

Businesses in Germany worry that the country “could face its biggest economic crisis since 1945,” while Poland blamed that Germany is “the main roadblock” to imposing tougher sanctions on Russia, Reuters reported. – Global Times