Ukraine crisis: UK will sanction Putin 'imminently', Johnson tells NATO

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday told the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) that the UK will “imminently” impose direct sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Addressing a virtual meeting of NATO leaders, Johnson said his government will personally sanction the Russian leaders over their "revanchist mission" to overturn the post-Cold War order.

He also called for "immediate action" to ban Russia from the SWIFT payment platform to "inflict maximum pain" on the Russian regime.

“The Prime Minister urged leaders to take immediate action against SWIFT to inflict maximum pain on President Putin and his regime. The UK would introduce sanctions against President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov imminently, on top of the sanctions package the UK announced yesterday, he said,” a Downing Street spokesperson said, with reference to the NATO meeting.

“The Prime Minister added that the world must make certain President Putin would fail in this act of aggression. Ukraine was showing strong resistance. He added that there could no normalisation of relations with Russia after this act,” the spokesperson said.

Johnson warned NATO that the Russian President's ambitions might not stop at Ukraine and that this was a “Euro-Atlantic crisis with global consequences”.

The European Union (EU) has already sanctioned President Putin and his foreign minister.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had called on both the UK and EU to strengthen their package of measures hitting oligarchs supporting the Putin regime and freezing Russian bank assets.