Russia – Ukraine conflict: South Korea cuts ‘strategic’ export to Moscow

South Korea has joined international sanctions and banned the export of strategic materials to Russia amidst the situation around Ukraine, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday.

“As a form of sanctions against Russia, our government has prohibited the export of strategic materials to Russia, strengthening the export verification procedure,” the ministry said in a statement.

The statement said the relevant South Korean departments will consider possible restrictions on non-strategic materials and extension of sanctions against Russia, including 57 items that are subject to the U.S. sanctions, such as computers, sensors, aviation, space industries, and others.

Western nations have rolled out a sanctions campaign against Russia after it launched a military operation in Ukraine earlier on Thursday, following requests for help from the people’s republics in Donbas.

The Russian defence ministry said the operation was targeting the military infrastructure of Ukraine only and that the civilian population is not in danger.

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Moscow says it has no plans to occupy Ukraine and that the purpose of its operation is demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.

It has taken a week to reach this point, but western governments have put down their peashooters and wheeled out the financial howitzers against Vladimir Putin.

Far-reaching new sanctions against Russia were announced on Saturday night in a joint statement from the EU, UK, U.S., and Canada.

Having promised to “hit Russia very hard” with a barrage of sanctions, the UK’s first attempt at economic retaliation, presented to parliament by Boris Johnson on Tuesday, was dismissed as the equivalent of taking a “peashooter to a gunfight”.

Successive UK measures, announced on Thursday and Friday, were a little more meaningful, but a long way from inflicting serious damage.

The steps taken by the US and the EU also lacked bite, falling well short of the kind of restrictions imposed on North Korea or Iran.

The UK has pushed for more, joining Ukraine’s leaders in calls to expel Russia from Swift, the main global payments system used by banks to make cross-border money transfers.