Zelenskyy sanctions 108 people, including former PM over Russia collusion

Kyiv, The Gulf Observer: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people, including a former prime minister and a former education minister, and said he aimed to fight wartime abductions of children from Ukraine and other “Russian terror”.

“We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them, and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done,” he said in his new video address after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskiy did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the “Russian Children’s Foundation.”

Zelenskiy said in his address that the list included “those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory” and individuals who “in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine.”

Some of the newly-sanctioned people, which included many with Russian citizenship, had previously been punished with separate or similar penalties. Those included Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science who had his Ukrainian citizenship stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.