KIEV-Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has enforced the National Security and Defense Council’s sanctions against the Russian Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation, Volga-Dnepr Co, and 77 more companies, as follows from the presidential decree posted on his office’s website on Sunday.
Among the blacklisted Russian companies are SNABKOM, Zvyozdochka special production and technical base, Speagregat plant, Molot-Mekhanika plant, Sevmormasj-2M Sevastopol machine-building plant, Dalzavod ship repairs center, Sevastopol machine tool plant, 322 and 514 aircraft repairs plants.
Along with Russian companies, the sanctions also cover several Ukrainian and foreign companies. Personal sanction were also slapped on ten Ukrainian nationals, who “are the top ten Ukrainian smugglers,” according to President Zelensky.
Earlier, Ukrainian Culture Minister Alexander Tkachenko called on the National Security and Defense Council to consider the expediency of the Russian humanitarian cooperation’s office in the country.
He claimed that “Rossotrudnichestvo’s office in Ukraine and its Kiev-based Russian Science and Culture Center are involved in circulating Russian narratives and propaganda all over the world under the guise of cultural and scientific cooperation.”
In particular, the minister was outraged by the March 9 post on Rossotrudnichestvo’s Facebook account announcing an event entitled ‘International Contest of Contemporary Poets. Shevchenko Day,’ which referred to Taras Shevchenko as “a Russian-Ukrainian poet.”
On Saturday, deputy speaker of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house Konstantin Kosachev called for refraining from closing the Ukrainian culture center in Moscow as a response measure that was to follow anyway. He slammed this decision as “another example of the gradual degradation of the Ukrainian authorities in their policy towards Russia” and called for not “taking after homegrown nationalists.”
The Russian Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad set up its office in Ukraine in 2007. It operates under the agreement on information and cultural centers approved by the Ukrainian and Russian governments. In accordance with this agreement, Ukraine’s National Cultural Center functions in Moscow.
Among the priorities of the Rossotrudnichestvo branch are bilateral humanitarian ties. It draws up and implements the projects and programs to support the Russian language and promote Russian culture and educational services, provides help to compatriots’ communities and to veteran organizations. / tass