Day: November 18, 2023

Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah (KH) militia, a powerful armed faction with close ties to Iran, brushed off U.S. sanctions on the group over attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and said Saturday such strikes aimed to drain the enemy.” 

The U.S. issued sanctions Friday against several KH members and against another Iran-backed Shiite militia and its secretary-general, accusing them of being involved in attacks against the United States and its partners in Iraq and Syria. 

The United States has blamed Iran and militia groups it supports for the more than 60 attacks since mid-October as regional tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war, which began on October 7. At least 59 U.S. military personnel have been wounded in the attacks, though all have returned to duty so far.  

A statement on Telegram by Abu Ali Al-Askari, a security official in the group, on Saturday dismissed the sanctions as “ridiculous,” and said the measures would not affect the group’s operations.  

“Well-studied strikes by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq against enemies, causing losses in their ranks and destroying vehicles or confusing or distracting them, is going according to a strategy to drain the enemy,” the statement said.  

Among those linked to Kataeb Hezbollah targeted Friday are a member of the group’s lead decision-making body, its foreign affairs chief, and a military commander the Treasury said has worked with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to train fighters. 

The U.S. State Department also designated militia group Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and its secretary general, Abu Ala al-Walai, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. 

In a statement posted on Telegram late Friday, Walai described the sanctions as “a medal of honor.” 

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those targeted and generally bar Americans from dealing with them. Those who engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions. 

The United States has 900 troops in Syria, and 2,500 more in neighboring Iraq, on a mission it says aims to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swaths of both countries but was later defeated. 

Militia groups in Iraq have linked the recent attacks on U.S. bases to Washington’s support for Israel in its war on Gaza and say the U.S. should cease backing Israel’s assault if it wants the attacks to stop.  

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 Saturday in his nightly video address after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Zelenskyy 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.”

Zelenskyy 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 whose Ukrainian citizenship was stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Azarov, along with former President Viktor Yanukovich, previously saw some of his assets and property frozen, among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Other individuals penalized on Saturday included Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, and Leonid Pasechnik, whom Putin appointed head of Luhansk, the eastern Ukrainian region Russia annexed in 2022.

The sanctioned Russian groups included several whose names or websites indicate they work with children.

One sanctioned group was named Kvartal Lui, which matches an organization with a website that says its founder is Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, herself sanctioned by Kyiv in October 2022.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague this month issued an arrest warrant against Lvova-Belova, along with President Vladimir Putin, accusing them of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s new list also sanctioned the executive director of Kvartal Lui, Sofia Lvova-Belova. Her older sister, Maria Lvova-Belova, has said children were taken to shelter them from violence and denied committing any war crime.

Kyiv says about 20,000 children have been removed to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of their family or guardians, which it says amounts to a war crime that meets the U.N. treaty definition of genocide.

Yale University published research Thursday saying more than 2,400 children ages 6-17 had also been taken to 13 facilities across Russian-allied Belarus.

The report, from a group that receives U.S. State Department funding, said that the transports across Russian territory to its western neighbor were “ultimately coordinated” between Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Zelenskyy’s decrees upheld a decision by the National Security and Defense Council to issue sanctions with an array of penalties including blocking assets, trade, transit, leasing, removal of capital, land purchases and other financial and economic activities.

Dozens of migrants stood behind barriers Saturday at two crossings on Finland’s border with Russia, the Finnish Border Guard said, after Helsinki erected barricades to halt a flow of asylum-seekers it says was instigated by Moscow. 

The Finnish government has accused Russia of funneling migrants to the crossings in retaliation for its decision to increase defense cooperation with the United States, an assertion dismissed by the Kremlin. 

The Finnish Border Guard erected barriers from midnight Friday at the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border posts in southeast Finland, which account for most of the traffic between the two countries. 

Despite the closure, dozens of migrants arrived Saturday afternoon at the Nuijamaa and Vaalimaa crossings and lit a campfire in sub-zero temperatures behind razor-wire barriers mounted by border guards, Finnish Border Guard told reporters. 

In Nuijamaa, two people managed to breach the barriers and enter Finland, it added. 

“We are currently improving the barriers so that something similar will no longer be possible,” Colonel Mika Rytkonen said, according to Finland’s public broadcaster YLE.  

Finland shares a 1,340-km (830-mile) border with Russia that also serves as the EU’s external border. Some 300 asylum-seekers, mostly from Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Syria, have arrived in Finland this week, according to the Border Guard. 

Four regular border crossings remain open for the time being, but asylum can now only be sought at two of those, in Salla and Vartius, farther north, the Border Guard said. 

On Saturday, 67 people arrived to seek asylum at the Vartius post, the local border guard unit said on X, formerly known as Twitter. A group of migrants arrived half an hour past the station’s closing time, local media reported. 

“In this situation we had to let these people into Finland because Russia would not take them back,” head of the Vartius station, Captain Jouko Kinnunen, told Finnish channel MTV.  

The Kremlin said Friday that Finland was making a “big mistake” by closing border crossings and that Helsinki’s move was destroying bilateral relations. 

In 2021, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia accused Moscow’s close ally Belarus of artificially creating a migrant crisis on their borders by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the frontier — an accusation Belarus repeatedly denied.  

European Union border agency Frontex told Reuters Friday it would send officers to Finland to help safeguard the frontier. 

Finance Minister Riikka Purra of the anti-immigration Finns Party said Thursday that Finland was ready to close all crossing points on the Russian border if necessary. 

Finland’s ombudsman for nondiscrimination this week said Helsinki still had a duty under international treaties and EU law to allow asylum-seekers to seek protection. 

Finland blocks border crossings to stop migrants it says were sent by Russia.  

Finland says Russia leads asylum-seekers to its border.