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doesn't reveal the number of Ukrainians who left Russia. On July 13, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of deporting over 2 million Ukrainians.
Pelosi asks Blinken to label Russia as terrorist state. According to Politico, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and warned him that otherwise, Congress will do so. Politico cited anonymous officials familiar with the phone call that occurred between Pelosi and Blinken earlier this week.
US senators introduce resolution recognizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide. According to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee press release, U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Ben Cardin introduced a resolution "recognizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which include forced deportations to Russia and the purposeful killing of Ukrainian civilians in mass atrocities, as constituting a genocide against the people of Ukraine." The senators introduced the resolution shortly after Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, delivered a plea directly to Congress on July 20.
Putin: West pushes Russia, Belarus towards unification. Russian President Vladimir Putin added that Western sanctions are forcing Moscow and Minsk to work together to minimize economic damage and maximize production. Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in turn, said that former Soviet republics should seek “alignment” with Russia and Belarus “if they want to preserve their sovereignty and independence." Russia and Belarus created the Union State, a binational confederation, in 2000. It remained a formality until recently but the two countries have stepped up talks on merging their state institutions and markets since 2019.
Putin says sanctions cause ‘colossal’ problems in Russian tech industry.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin told officials during a video conference on strategic development goals that Russia is facing "colossal problems" in the high-tech sector due to international sanctions, but that Russia will not allow its economy to fall back decades and will look for solutions by relying on domestic resources, Bloomberg reports.
Ukraine asks EU to impose sanctions on 30 Russian banks. The Yermak-McFaul Expert Group on Russian Sanctions called on the EU to impose sanctions against all top 30 Russian banks, including Gazprombank, while keeping gas payments under a separate mechanism.
Ukraine requests Turkey detain Russian-flagged ship carrying Ukrainian grain. According to a Ukrainian foreign ministry official who spoke with Reuters, a 7,146 dwt Zhibek Zholy loaded the first cargo of some 4,500 tonnes of grain from Russian-occupied Berdiansk, which the official said belonged to
44 RUSSIA Country Report October 2020 www.intellinews.com