April 6, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his NATO counterparts, plus foreign ministers from non-NATO countries, including Australia and Japan.Here's what you need to know:From CNN's Masha AngelovaNew US sanctions against Russia are “a direct blow to the population of Russia, to ordinary citizens,” Russia’s ambassador to the US said Wednesday.His response comes as US President Joe Biden announced new sanctions Wednesday targeting Russia’s biggest financial institutions — Sberbank and Alfa Bank — as well as individuals, including President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters and the wife and daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.The move from Washington is in response to the civilian deaths discovered in parts of Ukraine that were previously occupied by Russian forces."We will keep raising the economic cost and ratchet up the pain for Putin and further increase Russia's economic isolation," Biden said, describing the civilian deaths as "major war crimes."Read more about the US sanctions: From CNN's Akanksha SharmaTaiwan has imposed fresh sanctions against Russia that target the export of 57 high-tech commodities, the island's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said in a statement Wednesday. The details of those plans have not yet been released and officials anticipate many Ukrainians fleeing will stay in Europe.From CNN’s Mia AlbertiThe "age of engagement with Russia is over,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said at a dinner with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, according to a statement from UK Foreign Office released ahead of the dinner.In her remarks, Truss told her NATO counterparts that the "NATO-Russia Founding Act is dead and it is time to cast off an outdated approach to handling Russia,” the foreign office said.The Act, signed in 1997, rules that "NATO and Russia do not consider one another adversaries", according to the original document.Truss’s remarks come as NATO foreign ministers convene in Brussels to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.According to the statement sent to CNN, Truss underlined that NATO cannot allow "security vacuums" at the alliance's Eastern borders and should "rethink" support for countries "caught in the web of Russian influence" such as Georgia, Moldova, Sweden and Finland. As President Eisenhower, the alliance’s first supreme commander, said: “History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid,” the Foreign Secretary wrote.From CNN's Hira HumayunUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed the need to revive Ukraine’s economy following the Russian invasion, in his nightly address posted to social media on Wednesday night.He said he had a meeting with the members of the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv, adding, “We must do everything possible to restore the work of domestic enterprises, trade activities, and revive small and medium-sized enterprises throughout our territory where it is safe and possible to work.”Zelensky said the economy is also a “frontline” on which Ukrainians fight for their freedom.He went on to say, “If we need to relocate businesses from certain areas, we have to do it.