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Russian President Vladimir Putin
Photo: Kristina Kormilitsyna / AFP
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on his country's banks not to hesitate and operate in the illegally annexed territories of Ukraine. “What they used to fear, the sanctions, has long since happened. Why be afraid?" Putin said in Moscow at a meeting on the region's social and economic development. "You have to go to these areas more actively and work there," he said, according to the Tass news agency.
In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, which had previously been Ukrainian. After the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Moscow also declared the Ukrainian administrative regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to be Russian territory in 2022, in violation of international law. Russian troops only control part of these territories militarily. Russian banks were already cautious about getting involved in Crimea because of Western sanctions. They are also hardly represented in the other regions.
Putin spoke of a rapid integration of the territories into Russian structures. Two million people were already receiving regular pensions and other payments, he said. By 2025 there should be five million people. In fact, the occupying power is reportedly tying pensions to the Ukrainians living there accepting Russian passports. The Kremlin chief set the goal of bringing the areas that - as he said - historically belonged to Russia, to an average Russian standard of living by 2030.
czl/dpa