The announcement is expected to come later in the day, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter before the decision was made public.
KYIV, Ukraine — The White House is expected to announce Wednesday that President Joe Biden is allowing sanctions to move forward against the company that built the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and against the company's CEO.
Russia emptied its diplomatic posts in Ukraine, state news agency Tass reported, a day after the Foreign Ministry announced a plan to evacuate, citing threats. By Wednesday afternoon, the Russian flag no longer flew over the Kyiv embassy, and police surrounded the building. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, added that"we still cannot confirm that Russian forces have moved into the Donbas area."
Many of the same sites were similarly knocked offline in attacks last week that the U.S. and U.K. governments quickly blamed on Russia's GRU military intelligence agency. Such attacks barrage websites with junk traffic, rendering them unreachable. Wednesday's DDoS attacks appeared to have less impact than the earlier onslaught, with targeted sites soon reachable again -- as emergency responders blunted them.
European Union sanctions against Russia took effect, targeting several companies along with 351 Russian lawmakers, who voted for a motion urging Putin to recognize the rebel regions, and 27 senior government officials, business executives and top military officers. In Ukraine's east, where an eight-year conflict between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces has killed nearly 14,000 people, violence also spiked again. One Ukrainian soldier was killed and six more were injured after rebel shelling, the Ukrainian military said. Separatist officials reported several explosions on their territory overnight and three civilian deaths.
Putin laid out three conditions that he said could end the standoff, urging Kyiv to recognize Russia's sovereignty over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, to renounce its bid to join NATO and partially demilitarize. Ukraine long has rejected such demands.
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