Vladimir Putin calls on banks to do business in annexed Ukrainian territories. “Why be afraid?” said Putin.
There would already be sanctions anyway. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, which had previously been Ukrainian. Moscow also declared the Ukrainian administrative regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to be Russian territory in 2022, in violation of international law. The Kremlin chief set the goal of bringing the areas that historically belonged to Russia, to an average Russian standard of living by 2030.