The crisis between Russia and Ukraine with leaked documents confirming the United States and NATO had rejected Russia’s key security demands and the Biden administration ordering 3000 additional troops into Eastern Europe.
Ukranian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Australia can assist Ukraine in a range of ways including sanctions on Russian officials.AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week accused the West of ignoring Russia’s concerns and deliberately creating a scenario designed to lure it into war,after Moscow sent more than 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border.
Mr Kuleba said it was time for Australia to “impose tougher sanctions on Russia” and called on the federal government to use the to sanction senior Russian officials close to Mr Putin “who have long earned reasons to be sanctioned for gross human rights violations”.
The laws,partly based on the US Magnitsky Act,allow the federal government to ban human rights abusers and corrupt officials from Australia and seize their assets.
“The Federal Parliament of Australia passed the law with bipartisan support just recently,in December 2021,and now Australia can use this effective tool to send Russia a strong deterrence message,in concert with like-minded nations,” Mr Kuleba said in an opinion piece forThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham earlier this week did not rule out against Russia,saying “we will not hesitate to upgrade them and undertake further sanctions if that’s warranted should Russia escalate this situation”.
Mr Kuleba said international peace and security was at stake. He warned that unless Russia was stopped “shockwaves will be felt all around the globe” and the ensuring situation would represent a “failure of democracies to defend what they stand for and hence embolden those who challenge the existing order”.
He said Australia had been a “consistent supporter of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”,and that the two countries “champion world order based on international law”.
“Australia’s respect for international law and the primacy of sovereign borders,human rights and freedom of navigation,led it to a principled stance on Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014,together with all western democracies,” he said.
While Ukraine was capable of defending itself and was not reliant on Australia sending troops into its territory,Mr Kuleba said “we do require a deeper military-technical cooperation to strengthen Ukraine’s Armed Forces”.
He said Australia also needed to counter Russian propaganda,adding Mr Putin’s “main disinformation tools,Russia Today and Sputnik,still freely operate in Australia”.
“They disseminate false claims on all sorts of topics,from conspiracy theories surrounding the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17,to undermining public trust in COVID-19 vaccines,justifying Russia’s 2008 invasion in Georgia and its ongoing occupation of Crimea,” he said. “The purpose is simple:sow confusion,manipulate public opinion,undermine democratically elected government and democracy as such.”
He also raised the alarm about a massive computer hack on key Ukranian government websites and said Kyiv and Canberra had already begun working together on preventing cyber attacks.
Ukraine has reported that dozens of systems within at least two government agencies were wiped during a cyberattack last month using malware known as “WhisperGate”.
In an,security company CrowdStrike said the malware aims “to irrevocably corrupt the infected hosts’ data and attempt to masquerade as genuine modern ransomware operations”.
Adam Meyers,senior vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike,told this masthead that Russia was using cyber as a means of intimidation but was also preparing to use cyber attacks alongside conventional military action in any potential invasion.
“There’s a high probability that the Russians will deploy offensive cyber capabilities in conflict with Ukraine or in anticipation of conflict with Ukraine,” he said.
“They would like to try to use it to disrupt ground systems that might make the Ukrainian response slowed,or less effective.
“They’ll also attempt to use information operations in order to attack the constitution or the will of the Ukrainian people to fight against them,to resist,by using fear and misinformation that gets weaponised.”
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