Chris Lange, FISM News
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Senior U.S. officials told reporters Thursday that the Biden administration has imposed sanctions on Russian and Iranian intelligence organizations over the wrongful detainment of American citizens, according to an Axios report.
The details and significance of the sanctions are unclear since President Joe Biden had already signed an executive order for sanctions against the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the intelligence branch of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in July 2022.
U.S. officials said the move was made in an effort to discourage kidnappings and detainment of U.S. citizens abroad. Critics have accused the Biden administration of incentivizing American hostage-taking after bargaining for the release of detained WNBA player Brittney Griner in exchange for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. The so-called “Merchant of Death” was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. for conspiring to kill Americans. Griner was charged with cannabis possession in a Moscow court and sentenced to nine years. The prisoner swap took place in December.
“We do think it’s significant that the first round of sanctions are being announced specifically for this type of behavior because we’re really concerned about this type of behavior,” one official said.
The announcement came a day after Newsweek published a statement from David Whelan, the brother of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who said he has been kept in the dark about an outstanding offer by the administration to secure his sibling’s release. Paul Whelan was detained in Russia in 2018 on espionage charges and sentenced two years later to 16 years in a Russian penal colony.
The sanctions were well underway last month when Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was also detained on espionage charges. The U.S. has declared both Whelan and Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained.” The same classification was pronounced in the detainments of Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi, and Morad Tahbaz in Iran.
UKRAINE SEEKS POPE’S HELP IN RESCUING ABDUCTED CHILDREN
Kyiv is asking for the pope’s help in rescuing Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was granted a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday to discuss rescue efforts for more than 16,000 Ukrainian children estimated to have been abducted by Russian authorities under the guise of humanitarian evacuations.
“I asked His Holiness to help us return home Ukrainians, Ukrainian children who are detained, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia,″ Shmyhal said, according to a report from the Associated Press.
Without providing specifics, Shmyhal said that he and Francis also discussed the “steps the Vatican could take” to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s multi-pronged proposal for a peaceful resolution to the Russian invasion.
The Vatican issued a brief statement following the meeting confirming that Francis and Shmyhal discussed “various matters connected to the war in Ukraine…with particular attention to the humanitarian aspects and efforts to restore peace.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, are the targets of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Both are accused of war crimes in the kidnappings of Ukrainian children. Russia maintains that there was no wrongdoing and that the children were relocated for their protection.
RUSSIA UNLEASHES LARGE-SCALE MISSILE ATTACK IN KYIV, UMAN; 5 CHILDREN AMONG THE DEAD
At least 17 people were reportedly killed by Russian cruise missiles in Friday’s pre-dawn attack on Kyiv and another city in the first large-scale assault on Ukraine’s capital in nearly two months.
Officials said that Russia targeted Kyiv and nearby Uman with more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones. Two missiles struck an apartment building in Kyiv, where three children, including a toddler, were counted among the dead, Reuters reported.
Missiles also struck a nine-story apartment complex in Uman, located roughly 135 miles south of Kyiv, killed 14 people, including two 10-year-old children, according to the report. Ukraine’s national police said that 17 others were wounded in the attack and that emergency responders rescued three children found alive under the rubble.
“Rescuers will work until they make sure that no one else is left under the rubble,” President Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter. “We can only defeat Russian terror together – with weapons for Ukraine, the toughest sanctions against the terrorist state, fair sentences for the Russian killers.”
Ukraine’s military command said that it shot down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia in the attack.