Russia Watch

Source Link
Excerpt:

In an explosive new interview with former Congressman and Fox News host Trey Gowdy, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said more declassified documents are coming that expose the FBI’s coordinated effort to bury the truth and amplify a lie—all to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.

Ratcliffe confirmed that he and current FBI Director Kash Patel are preparing to declassify additional records proving that the FBI actively suppressed a counterintelligence referral about Hillary Clinton’s plan to frame Trump while giving full legitimacy to the now-debunked Steele Dossier, paid for by Clinton herself.

According to Ratcliffe, foreign intelligence services had already flagged a plot by Hillary Clinton to smear Trump as a Russian agent, a scheme known internally as the “Clinton Plan.”

Yet this intelligence was never shared with Congress. Instead, it was buried, while Obama’s inner circle, including Biden, were fully briefed on it.

According to declassified materials already made public by Ratcliffe and former Special Counsel John Durham, the Clinton campaign not only greenlit the collusion hoax, but also coordinated with foreign groups including the Soros Foundation to build a disinformation war chest against Trump.

Source Link
Excerpt:

In a high-stakes WarRoom segment, Steve Bannon and investigative bulldog John Solomon laid out the case that the Hillary Clinton-led Russia hoax was never a conspiracy theory—it was an orchestrated political dirty trick that corrupted our intelligence agencies, weaponized the media, and nearly derailed the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

And the most explosive part? The key players did it again in 2020—and they’re positioning to repeat it in 2026.

“This isn’t about old news,” Bannon declared. “This is about a pattern of institutional abuse that, if unpunished, will finish off our constitutional republic.”

QUICK CLIP:

Source Link
Excerpt:

China and Russia began joint naval drills in the Sea of Japan on Sunday as they seek to reinforce their partnership and counterbalance what they see as a U.S.-led global order.

Alongside economic and political ties, Moscow and Beijing have strengthened their military cooperation in recent years, and their relations have deepened since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The “Joint Sea-2025” exercises kicked off in waters near the Russian port of Vladivostok and would last for three days, China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The two sides will hold “submarine rescue, joint anti-submarine, air defense and anti-missile operations, and maritime combat.”

Four Chinese vessels, including guided-missile destroyers Shaoxing and Urumqi, are participating in the exercises alongside Russian ships, the ministry said.

Source Link
Excerpt:

The bloc’s economy is weakening due to reduced cooperation with Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has said

The EU’s decision to reduce energy and trade cooperation with Moscow over the Ukraine conflict has cost the bloc more than €1 trillion ($1.15 trillion), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko has said.

In an interview with Izvestia on Monday, Grushko said the figure is based on various expert estimates of the economic consequences of the EU’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia, adding that it accounts for lost profits from energy and trade cooperation.

According to Grushko, trade between the EU and Russia dropped from €417 billion ($482 billion) in 2013 to €60 billion ($69 billion) in 2023 and is now “approaching zero.” He added that Europe’s economy has subsequently taken a hit and is losing competitiveness.

“Natural gas in Europe is four to five times more expensive than in the US, and electricity is two to three times higher,” he said. “That is the price Europe has to pay for ending all economic contacts with Russia.”


 

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that refusing Russian gas supplies had cost EU countries around €200 billion ($231 billion). In late 2024, Russian officials also estimated that total EU losses tied to sanctions against Russia had reached $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, Moscow has said it has acquired a “certain immunity” to Western sanctions.

Grushko’s comments come after the EU agreed a trade deal with the US, which commits the bloc to purchasing large volumes of American energy – which Moscow says will come at a much steeper cost than that provided by Russia – and imposes 15% tariffs on key EU exports. Numerous EU politicians have described the agreement as lopsided and damaging to the bloc’s interests.

Commenting on the US-EU deal, Putin claimed that the EU had essentially lost its political sovereignty, and that this directly leads to losing economic independence.

The EU began imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014, following the start of the Ukraine crisis, and expanded them drastically in 2022. Measures have targeted banking, energy exports, and other industries. Moscow considers the sanctions illegal, saying they violate international trade rules and harm global economic stability.

You can share this story on social media:

Source Link
Excerpt:

The Kremlin has warned that everyone should be careful about nuclear rhetoric, after Donald Trump ordered a repositioning of US nuclear submarines.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down the significance of Mr Trump’s announcement last Friday that he had ordered two submarines to be moved to “the appropriate regions”.

The move came after former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made remarks about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.

Moldova’s president warns of ‘unprecedented’ Russian election meddling– politico
Source Link
Excerpt:

Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Wednesday accused Russia of planning an “unprecedented” campaign to interfere in the country’s September parliamentary election, warning of a large-scale effort involving illegal financing, cyberattacks and disinformation.

“The Russian Federation wants to control the Republic of Moldova from autumn onwards,” Sandu said at a press conference in the capital Chișinău. She called the plan a “direct threat to our state security, the country’s sovereignty, and the European future of Moldova,” and urged citizens and institutions to remain vigilant.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Fresh from his latest research trip to Ukraine’s battlefields, Michael Kofman joins Ryan for an insightful discussion on the shifting dynamics at the front, the role of drones in Ukraine’s defensive strategy, and the adaptation of Ukrainian military command structures in real time. They explore the political turmoil gripping Ukraine, including contentious reforms targeting anti-corruption agencies, and delve into evolving Western efforts for supplying arms to Ukraine. Their conversation also tackles the implications of President Trump’s growing frustration with Putin and provides a clear-eyed assessment of Senator Graham’s proposed Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, and what it might mean (or, not mean) for the future of the conflict. Kofman goes into many of these issues further in his show, “The Russia Contingency,” so don’t miss out on becoming a member. Join at warontherocks.com/membership.

Source Link
Excerpt:

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) whether a special counsel was warranted following Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of documents alleging that former President Barack Obama led the effort to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies against Donald Trump in 2016.

“Well, you know, the allegations and the conspiracy theories by Tulsi Gabbard would be sad if they weren’t so dangerous,” Crow replied. “She has turned herself into basically a weapon of mass distraction, is what I’ve been calling it, because it’s very clear what’s happening here. She’s trying to curry favor and get back into favor with Donald Trump, and has concocted these theories to do so.”

He added, “But let’s be really clear here that the Russian investigation and allegations of Russian interference into the election, have been the most examined and reexamined finding in the intelligence community history. There have been four investigations, including a bipartisan Senate investigation led under the first Trump administration and led in part by Marco Rubio. That was very, very clear on these findings.”

Source Link
Excerpt:

One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Russia on Wednesday, injuring several people, according to local authorities.

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake’s epicentre was around 119 kilometres from the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000, on the Kamchatka peninsula.

Tsunami waves reached as high as 10-15 metres in some sections of the Kamchatka coast, according to Russia’s Oceanography Institute.

Scientists expect aftershocks at magnitudes of up to 7.5, according to the local branch of the Russian Emergency Ministry. It said more tsunamis are possible near the regional capital of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

Head of the regional health department Oleg Melnikov said several people were hurt as they left buildings and a hospital patient was injured. A local kindergarten was also reportedly damaged. All injured were in stable condition, Melnikov said.

Source Link
Excerpt:

President Donald Trump acknowledged on Friday that former President Barack Obama is likely to dodge accountability for his role in the Russian collusion hoax on account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024, immunity for official acts ruling in Trump v. United States.

Trump suggested, however, that the high court’s ruling “doesn’t help the people around him at all” — an allusion to those Obama cabalists who hatched, then perpetuated the Russian collusion hoax on the American people.

The FBI has, for instance, launched a criminal investigation into ex-CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for perjury and potentially other crimes related to the Trump-Russia hoax. Former DNI James Clapper indicated he would “lawyer up” after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard referred damning documents detailing the genesis of the hoax’s manufacture under Obama to the Department of Justice.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe hinted Sunday that twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton might also face the music over her apparent hand in what Gabbard has referred to as an alleged “treasonous conspiracy.”

Source Link
Excerpt:

A Democratic member of Congress said the quiet part out loud over the weekend, admitting that prominent party officials knew the Trump-Russia collusion allegation was a hoax but chose to pursue it anyway in order to hamstring Trump at the start of his first administration.

The offhand remark by Rep. Jason Crow (D-WI) on “Fox News Sunday” was flagged by conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who called the admission “damning” in light of “falsehoods” being promulgated by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and others.

“That is a particularly telling and frank[ly] damning statement since figures like Adam Schiff were out spreading the false collusion claims,” Turley wrote on X.

In a column, the George Washington University law professor described the Trump administration’s effort to tell “the story of the real Russian conspiracy: how high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration seeded this false claim with the help of an eager, unquestioning press corps.”

“Not surprisingly, the media (which spent years repeating the false Russian collusion claims) is doing a full-court press to kill the story. Yet, many of these key figures are retaining counsel in anticipation of the unfolding investigation. Many previously secured contracts with MSNBC or CNN, or book deals, where they doubled down on the false claims detailed in these new documents,” he wrote.

Source Link
Excerpt:

President Donald Trump has set a new deadline of “ten or twelve” days for Russia to make a deal and end the war with Ukraine.

Trump has been pressuring Russia to cease hostilities or face economic repercussions, including tariffs on their key trading partners.

The deadline Trump set on July 14 was 50 days, but he said he has been “very disappointed” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s lack of effort.

“I’m going to make a new deadline, of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump said while speaking to reporters in Scotland alongside UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “There’s no reason for waiting. It was 50 days. I wanted to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”

Source Link
Excerpt:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard did an excellent service to our nation this week when she released a declassified version of a critical September 2020 House Intelligence Committee staff report on a major January 2017 intelligence report, known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), titled “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.”

Gabbard’s decision came after a years-long tug-of-war over the release of this report between Republican members of Congress who believe it provides critical information about the Russia collusion hoax and the involvement of Obama officials and the U.S. Intelligence Community versus Democratic congressmen and deep state intelligence officials who have desperately tried to hide this report from the American public.

Press accounts have reported most of the essential details of the House report, such as how it was rushed out on President Obama’s orders to be published just before Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017. Media stories have also detailed how substandard intelligence was used to justify the ICA’s finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win and that this bad intelligence was included on the orders of CIA Director John Brennan over the objections of senior CIA analysts. The media has also reported the House Intelligence report’s finding that a hand-picked group of five analysts wrote the ICA and that it was not adequately vetted by U.S. intelligence agencies and analysts. It is also clear in the House report that, despite numerous statements by Brennan denying it, the fraudulent Steele dossier was heavily used in the ICA.

Source Link
Excerpt:

 

 

This is a war over legacies: Obama versus Trump. But it’s more than that.

This is also a war over personalities and PR strategies.

It didn’t get much media attention, but 11 days ago, President Obama delivered a blunt, hard-hitting message to whiny, sniveling Democrats:

 

“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts of his remarks exclusively obtained by CNN.

Yeah! Toughen up, you leftwing babies! Quit complaining and get back to work!

Of course, Obama delivered this “hard-hitting message” in a closed-door, off-the-record, private dinner party for super-rich DNC donors.

Obama spoke at a private fundraiser hosted by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his wife, Tammy Murphy, at their home in Red Bank, New Jersey. The intimate dinner drew in $2.5 million through in-person and online donations for the Democratic National Committee, a source familiar with the event said.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has weighed in on allegations that former president Barack Obama and his national security team created a false intelligence community assessment in order to target Donald Trump following his election in 2016.

In a post on X, Lee noted that in the 1970s the Frank Church committee concluded that every administration since the era of Woodrow Wilson has used the nation’s intelligence-gathering communities for political espionage.

Lee suggested that it would be foolish to believe that this no longer happens and that, while people have brushed it aside for years, the practice can no longer be ignored.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Using a declassified document released this week, it has never been easier to see how the propaganda press partners with politicians to hoodwink the public and shape the political landscape.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, released a 2020 Oversight Investigation and Referral report about a 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) titled, “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.”

It showed that under the direction of former President Barack Obama, then-CIA Director John Brennan and a handful of intelligence agents slapped together an ICA in two weeks, soon after Hillary Clinton lost the election. The ICA was used as the foundation of the Russia collusion hoax — the lie that Trump and Russia together cheated to win the 2016 election.

But the ICA was a terrible foundation for such a claim, because it was hastily written and had sketchy sourcing, including the fabricated and now debunked Steele dossier; and a six-word fragment of a sentence that mentioned Trump out of context. The report shows that intelligence agents argued with Brennen, telling him not to use information that was substandard, unclear, of uncertain origin, biased, or implausible.

 

Source Link
Excerpt:

MOSCOW: Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the 40-year-old Admiral Kuznetsov, is likely to be sold or scrapped, the chairman of Russia’s state shipbuilding corporation told the Kommersant newspaper in comments published on Friday (Jul 25).

Andrei Kostin’s remarks follow a report in the daily Izvestia newspaper earlier this month, which cited unnamed sources as saying long-running refit and maintenance work on the warship had been suspended.

Launched in 1985 when the Soviet Union still existed, the Admiral Kuznetsov saw action in Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of then-President Bashar al-Assad, with its planes carrying out airstrikes against rebel forces.

But it has played no role in the war in Ukraine and has been out of service since 2017, undergoing modernisation in the Murmansk area close to where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based.

Efforts to overhaul it have suffered repeated accidents and setbacks.

Asked about its fate on Thursday on the sidelines of a flag-raising ceremony for a new nuclear submarine in northwestern Russia, Kostin made it clear that a final decision had not yet been taken, but suggested that the Admiral Kuznetsov was no longer worth spending money on.

“We believe there is no point in repairing it anymore. It is over 40 years old, and it is extremely expensive … I think the issue will be resolved in such a way that it will either be sold or disposed of,” Kostin was quoted as saying by Kommersant.

Source Link
Excerpt:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced late Wednesday the formation of a Strike Force in response to new revelations about how former President Barack Obama and members of the intelligence community fabricated the Russia hoax that haunted President Donald Trump’s first term and cost American taxpayers millions of dollars.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that the Strike Force will “assess the evidence” and “investigate potential next legal steps,” related to a damning 2020 report released this week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

“There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an Intelligence Community Assessment that they knew was false,” Gabbard said during a White House press conference on Wednesday. “We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI, to investigate the criminal implications of this. … The evidence that we have found, and that we have released, directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.”

A federal Strike Force is made up of teams of investigators from multiple agencies working together to uncover complex cases of fraud and other offenses. Originally, Strike Forces were used to investigate webs of organized crime. For example, in the late 1960s, a Strike Force in Buffalo, New York, made up of attorneys and agents from several federal agencies achieved 30 indictments within the organized crime network, in part by learning about the organization’s leadership structure.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Until recently, it seemed clear that former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan had engaged in a sickening conspiracy, first to create a false “Russian collusion” narrative in order to spy on candidate Donald Trump and, after his election, to continue the canard to destabilize the incoming Trump Administration, perhaps resulting in impeachment.

But, also, until recently, both partisan actors could rely on the reputedly professional Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of December 2016, which concluded that, yes, Russia interfered in the 2016 elections so massively, in favor of Trump, that the result may have been affected. As a demonstration of the gravity of this harm, President Obama ordered thirty-five Russian diplomats expelled, a major insult to our adversary by our Nobel Peace Prize winner, perhaps inviting retaliation and crisis.

So, even if Trump were to show that his campaign did not participate in an election skewed by our enemy in his favor, it would have been challenging to show that the investigation of Trump, including electronic surveillance of his entire team, was unwarranted. In essence, this ICA was not only a sword Comey and Brennan could use against Trump, but a potential shield against their prosecution if Trump ever were to unearth their biased dishonesty in Russiagate. “Maybe we were overzealous,” they could argue, “but we were protecting America based on the ICA.”

However, with Tulsi Gabbard’s recent revelation that Obama suborned a false conclusion of meaningful pro-Trump Russian interference, a falsity adopted by Comey and Brennan, this December 2016 ICA is now a significant link in what has now become a strong case against these two treacherous plotters. Given Brennan’s false 2023 congressional testimony, the statute of limitations is no longer a bar to a coverup and lying conspiracy reaching back to 2016.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Of all of the bombshell revelations in newly declassified documents detailing the making of the Russia collusion hoax, perhaps the least stunning is that Democratic officials believed Hillary Clinton was suffering from “intensified psycho-emotional problems.”

That troubling nugget is part of a file — a dossier, if you will — that the Russians reportedly held on the failed 2016 presidential candidate. The fact that Bad Vlad Putin and the Kremlin crew didn’t drop the politically damaging information during the campaign blows up the manufactured premise of the corrupt “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation.

“Putin held back leaking some compromising material for post-election use against the expected Clinton Administration,” states a declassified 2020 report from the Republican-led House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). The report was released Wednesday with the approval of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who in recent days has unsealed a trove of buried Intelligence Community (IC) records exposing what she has described as a “years-long coup” against President Donald Trump.

“This report is the final nail in the coffin of the Russia hoax, which has perpetrated the greatest political fraud on the American people for over 8 years and undermined President Trump’s first term in office,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, R-Ark., said Wednesday in a press release. “This HPSCI staff report, for the first time, exposes in-depth details on how the Intelligence Community manufactured the Russia collusion hoax.”

Source Link
Excerpt:

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky undertook the largest shakeup of top government officials since the NATO-backed proxy war between Ukraine and Russia began in February 2022. Zelensky has officially appointed a new prime minister along with reshuffling several other top cabinet positions. The primary aim of the government shakeup is to solidify Kiev’s ties with the US administration of Donald Trump. US imperialism is still Ukraine’s most important military backer.

Yulia Svyrydenko, 39, was confirmed as the country’s new prime minister on Thursday and will replace former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who has served as prime minister since 2020. Shmyhal will remain part of the Zelensky government as the newly appointed defense minister.

Svyrydenko previously served as first deputy prime minister and minister of economic development and trade. She played the leading role in negotiating the “critical minerals deal” this past spring between Ukraine and the Trump administration that saw Ukraine hand over vast sections of its economy to US imperialism in exchange for continued military aid in the war against Russia.

“She was the key and the only person leading these negotiations. She managed to prevent them from unraveling,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economy minister who previously worked with Svyrydenko.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Ukraine’s SBU state security service launched a series of raids on the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) as part of an investigation into allegations that officials within the agency have been cooperating with Russia.

The SBU said on Monday that it had arrested two officials working for NABU, one a suspected Russian spy and the other over alleged business ties to Russia.

Source Link
Excerpt:

 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) accused the media of being “either duped or complicit” on the interference of the 2016 election by Russians.

“I want the press to be honest. I want Pulitzer Prizes to be returned. They were either duped or complicit in pushing that false narrative that put America in political turmoil for years,” Johnson told NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill.”

“It’s continuing to go on, all based on a Hillary Clinton dirty trick, the Steele Dossier that those guys knew was a dirty trick, and yet they used that to gin up the Mueller investigation, impeachments, everything else,” he added. “Listen, this is, again election interference orders of magnitude worse than anything Russia or China ever, ever could hope to achieve,” he added.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put out a report last week alleging that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence linked to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Gabbard argued in a statement that former officials took part in a “treasonous conspiracy” and said her office was turning over evidence to the Justice Department for possible criminal referrals.

Source Link
Excerpt:

 

Russian soldiers needing medical care returned by Ukraine

Two Russian soldiers in need of medical care were handed over by Ukrainian authorities yesterday to be returned home, the Russian defence ministry said.

A ministry statement on Telegram said the two servicemen were handed over and taken to Belarus, one of Moscow’s closest allies, on Russia’s western border. They were receiving treatment in Belarus and would soon return to Russia, it said.

The statement said the action was undertaken on the basis of agreements reached at the second of two direct meetings aimed at ending the conflict last month between Russian and Ukrainian representatives.

The two meetings in Istanbul resulted in agreements to return prisoners of war and remains of fallen soldiers, but made little progress towards an end to the more than three-year-old conflict.

Protests in Ukraine as Zelensky signs bill targeting anti-corruption bodies– www.bbc.com
Source Link
Excerpt:

President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a bill that critics say weakens the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies, sparking protests in several cities and drawing international criticism.

Critics say the new law undermines the authority of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo) – placing them under the control of the prosecutor general.

In an address on Wednesday, Zelensky said both agencies would still “work” but needed to be cleared of “Russian influence”.

After the bill passed, hundreds of people gathered in Kyiv for the biggest anti-government protest since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Demonstrations were also seen in the cities of Lviv, Dnipro and Odesa.

“We chose Europe, not autocracy,” said a poster held by one demonstrator. “My father did not die for this,” said another.

Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, Zelensky loyalist Ruslan Kravchenko, will now be able to reassign corruption probes to potentially more pliant investigators, and even to close them.

Source Link
Excerpt:

Britain on Monday slapped sanctions on 135 oil tankers in Russia’s shadow fleet in a bid to disrupt the flow of money helping Moscow fund the war in Ukraine.

A shipping services company and an oil trading firm were also sanctioned as part of the crackdown on a fleet “responsible for illicitly carrying $24 billion worth of cargo since the start of 2024,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.

Security analysts say the fleet of aging vessels is used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions that ban it from selling oil.

Hundreds of vessels have now been sanctioned by the European Union and the U.K. since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“New sanctions will further dismantle Putin’s shadow fleet and drain Russia’s war chest of its critical oil revenues,” Foreign Minister David Lammy said Monday.

The action came just days after “the U.K. and EU lowered the crude oil price cap further disrupting the flow of oil money into Putin’s war chest,” the ministry statement added.