Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday a set of sanctions on Russia, which include imposing sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, his chief of staff, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“Canada is announcing our third set of severe, coordinated sanctions,” Trudeau said. “First, we will be imposing sanctions on President Putin and his fellow architects of this barbaric war, his chief of staff and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.”
“Additionally, I am confirming Canada’s support to remove Russia from the SWIFT payment system, a critical part of the global banking system,” he added.
Excluding Russian banks from SWIFT, a high security network that connect thousands of financial institutions around the world, “would make it even more difficult for President Putin to finance his brutalities,” according to Trudeau.
“Canada is also announcing that we will levy additional sanctions on Belarus and its leaders for abetting President Putin’s invasion of a free and sovereign nation,” he said.
According to Trudeau, these sanctions will target 57 people and are in addition to the “dozens of existing strong sanctions already leveled against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime for their repeated, systematic human rights violations and decades of oppression of their own people.”
All this comes after Russia’s assault on Ukraine, which began on Thursday and has spread across the country. Russian forces have attacked by land, sea, and air, and are currently battling for control of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.