Tokyo: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Wednesday that Japan will implement a set of economic sanctions against Russia and two pro-Russian separatist regions in eastern Ukraine after Moscow formally recognized the areas and ordered deployment of troops there, reports Kyodo News.
The government will suspend issuing visas for officials from the two regions and freeze their assets. It will ban exports to and imports from the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk beside stopping the issue as well as trading in new Russian sovereign bonds in Japan, Kishida said.
“We strongly urge Russia to return to efforts to break the impasse through a diplomatic process,” Kishida told reporters.
“The situation is becoming all the more tense,” he said, adding that Japan will take additional steps swiftly in coordination with the G-7 and other nations if the crisis deepens.
The leaders of the G-7 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States plus the European Union — will hold a virtual meeting on Thursday to discuss the Ukrainian situation.
According to Kyodo, the Japanese government has set up a liaison office in the western Ukraine city of Lviv and arranged charter flights to help Japanese nationals leave the country. The sanctions are similar to those announced on Tuesday by the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.Â
