“Kiev: It’s Russia we’re fighting with”

Following deadly attacks on civilians in which around 50 people were killed on 27 January, Ukraine’s Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution recognising Russia as an “aggressor state” and pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk as “terrorists”, writes Gazeta Wyborcza.
According to Ukrainian MP Hanna Hopko, the aim of the resolution is “to mobilise the West to help Ukraine”. In a statement, the EU leaders condemned the killing of civilians during the “indiscriminate shelling of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on 24 January” and threatened Russia with further sanctions if it continues supporting the separatists in the Donbas region. GW speculates the new measures might include curbing the Russian banks and stock exchange access to the international SWIFT system –

American and British diplomacies already proposed in 2014 to reduce Russian banks’ and stock exchanges’ access to the SWIFT system – the main intermediary in global financial transactions. Moscow has reacted with panic. “Our response to cutting off SWIFT would be limitless”, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned yesterday, while Andrey Kostin, president of the Russian VTB bank, recently said that “it would be like war”.