The UK will personally sanction Russian president Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson has told a virtual meeting of Nato leaders.
Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov are being targeted over their “revanchist mission” to overturn the post-Cold War order, the prime minister said.
He told alliance leaders on Friday that the UK would echo measures announced by the EU to target the Russian leader.
Referring to Putin’s wish to recover territory which previously fell under the USSR, he said Russia was “engaging in a revanchist mission to overturn post-Cold War order”.
Johnson told allies “the UK would introduce sanctions against president Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov imminently, on top of the sanctions package the UK announced yesterday”, according to a No 10 spokesman.
“He warned the group that the Russian president’s ambitions might not stop there and that this was a Euro-Atlantic crisis with global consequences,” he said.
Johnson also used the meeting to urge “immediate action” over the banning of Russia from the Swift payment system to “inflict maximum pain” on the Kremlin.
It comes as frustrated Russian forces are prepared to “indiscriminately” use thermobaric bombs to seize control of Ukraine, Western officials believe.
One western official said it was “likely” that Russia failed to achieve its main objectives on day one of its invasion of Ukraine.
The official added: “And my fear with those objectives, that timescale not being met, is if that continues to be a theme where they are delayed and then my concern is that that Russia uses indiscriminate use of indirect fire, particularly artillery systems, thermobaric weapons - which we know Russia has both in its armoury and has used in previous conflicts.
“At the moment we’re not seeing the use of those particular weapons. But my fear would be that if they don’t meet the timescales and objectives that they would be indiscriminate in the use of violence and they don’t adhere to the same principles of necessity and proportionality and rule of law that Western forces do.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president issued a sombre warning to leaders of the EU as Russian forces continue to violently invade the country.
“This might be the last time you see me alive,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly told EU leaders on a conference call on Thursday night.
Zelenskyy is currently hiding in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv as more than 100,000 Russian troops continue to attack the country on Putin’s orders.
“We were supposed to talk on the phone this morning, but he was no longer available,” Italian prime minister Mario Draghi told his parliament on Friday morning of Zelenskyy.