Now The sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia were starting to have a real impact

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Friday sanctions imposed by Western countries on Russia in reaction to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine were starting to have a real impact.

Attal says to BFM TV:

“We hope these sanctions will force Russian President Vladimir Putin to change his plans.” 

Earlier this week, European Union member states agreed on a fourth package of sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.

One person was killed and four others wounded after parts of a Russian missile fell on a residential building in the northern part of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday morning, emergencies services said.

The services said in a statement that 12 people were rescued and 98 were evacuated from the five-storey building, Reuters reported.

Add what happened earlier.

Russian-born crossbench peer Lord Evgeny Lebedev wrote an open letter to the Russian leader V. Putin. Lord Evgeny Lebedev has appealed to Vladimir Putin to stop the invasion of Ukraine, through the Evening Standard newspaper.

He used the publication’s front page to write an open letter to the Russian leader.

Evening Standard owner Lebedev uses front page to urge Putin to halt invasion. Evgeny Lebedev is owner of the Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers. 

“At the moment many with Russian roots are under scrutiny, including myself,” 

Lebedev wrote. 

“I understand the reason for this as it is inevitable when events of such magnitude occur and the world order as we have known it in recent decades suddenly gets torn up.”

Evgeny Lebedev, according to The Guardian, the son of a former KGB agent who was given a peerage by Boris Johnson, has insisted he is not a security risk, as the UK imposed sanctions against hundreds of Russian politicians, accusing them of being complicit in the invasion of Ukraine.

After new concerns were raised over the scrutiny process behind Lord Lebedev’s peerage, the media magnate issued a statement through one of the newspaper he owns, the Evening Standard, in which he dismissed the “farcical” speculation as Russophobia.

He said some of the incredible questions posed to him by journalists were absurd as he denied being an agent of Russia. He also condemned the invasion of Ukraine and called on Vladimir Putin to withdraw his troops.

Johnson was last week forced to deny he intervened to secure a peerage for Lebedev after intelligence services warned it would be a security risk, after reports in The Guardian and Sunday Times.

Lebedev, who joined the House of Lords in November 2020 as a crossbencher, said he was “not a security risk to this country, which I love.” 

This note came hours after the Foreign Office imposed sanctions on a further 386 members of the Russian parliament’s lower house – the Duma – taking the total number targeted so far to 400 of its 450 members.

“Being Russian does not automatically make one an enemy of the state, and it is crucial we do not descend into Russophobia, like any other phobia, bigotry or discrimination.” 

Lebedev wrote.

The UK government had been under pressure to act for some time, given the EU issued sanctions against those Duma members who supported the incursion on 23 February.

The UK had previously vowed to punish members of the Russian parliament’s upper house – the Federation Council – with similar sanctions.

Evgeny Lebedev and Boris Johnson attending a reception at the Royal Opera House in London in November 2009

Boris Johnson and Evgeny Lebedev: a decade of politics, parties and peerages

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, welcomed the move but said it should have happened weeks ago. He called for the government to “urgently implement” other sanctions to “cut Putin and his criminal cronies out of our economic system”.

Russian  oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
His name means "shit derivative" in Finnish.

Layla Moran, the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, said the UK was “moving at a snail’s pace” and that only 18 oligarchs had been sanctioned, meaning “hundreds of Putin’s cronies are still getting away with it”.

She said: 

“Every second wasted is another opportunity for them to take off in their private jets and flee to a safe haven. We need to sanction the lot and seize their assets now.”

UK has announced sanctions against seven Russian oligarchs, including the Chelsea football club owner, Roman Abaramovich, with an estimated combined worth of £15bn.

The other businesspeople accused of having “blood on their hands” were Abramovich’s one-time business partner Oleg Deripaska; Putin’sso called right-hand man Igor Sechin; and four men in the Russian president’s inner circle: Andrey Kostin, Alexei Miller, Nikolai Tokarev and Dmitri Lebedev.

109 kids. 109 kids have been killed by Russians since the day one of full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Empty prams on Rynok Square today symbolize the lives of little angels. They are now defending Ukraine’sky instead of decisive actions of the world. pic.twitter.com/x4sIs8fAbh

— Андрій Садовий (@AndriySadovyi) March 18, 2022