Abu Dhabi, (Business News Report)|| World Bank has suspended all business in Russia and Belarus, in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The World Bank said it had not approved any new loans or investments in Russia since 2014, the year it annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
The bank spoke about Belarus, stressing that the new assumptions have been suspended since mid-2020, when the United States imposed sanctions on it due to a disputed presidential election.
Simultaneously, the US Deputy National Security Adviser confirmed that the administration of President Joe Biden is looking for ways to reduce US consumption of Russian oil.
The World Bank’s lending commitments to Belarus totaled $308 million in 2020, according to the bank’s website, with active projects including a biomass heating project, forest development work, and education upgrades.
The bank has loaned Russia more than $16 billion since the early 1990s.
On its website, the bank shows that the most recent approved projects include a youth program in the North Caucasus in 2013 and a cultural heritage program dating back to 2010.
The decision to halt all programs in Russia and Belarus came a day after World Bank and International Monetary Fund leaders said they were rushing to provide billions of dollars in additional funding to Ukraine in the coming weeks and months, warning that the war could have “significant repercussions” for other countries.
The European Union, the United States, Britain and other countries imposed a wide range of sanctions on Russia after its war on Ukraine.
They have also imposed asset freezes, travel bans, and other restrictions on many Russians, including President Vladimir Putin himself.
Prior to the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war on February 24, Moscow always declared its right to defend its security and remove what it called Nazis, in light of the insistence of Kyiv and its allies in the West to include it in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which wants to expand in the east.
Russia also said that its military operation came to defend the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, from the “genocide” carried out by Kyiv against the two regions that declared independence from Kyiv and were recently recognized by Moscow.
