Talks in Ankara and a widening economic war

What did the highest-level contact between Moscow and Kyiv since the invasion actually achieve? On 10 March 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met in Ankara, Turkey. No ceasefire was reached. The possibility of a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin was discussed.

Fighting continued

The military situation did not pause for diplomacy. Russian forces resumed shelling the port city of Mariupol after the airstrike on a children's hospital on 9 March, which killed three people. A humanitarian aid convoy trying to reach the city was forced to turn back because of heavy fighting.

Pressure on the Russian economy

The economic front moved quickly. The British government sanctioned Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea F.C., and froze all his assets in the United Kingdom. As a result, Chelsea could not sell further match tickets, its merchandise store was to close, and it could not buy or sell players until the club was sold.

Companies continued to withdraw. Goldman Sachs announced it was closing its operations in Russia, becoming the first major Wall Street bank to leave the country after the invasion. Nintendo and Sony Interactive Entertainment suspended all product sales in Russia, and Sony's PlayStation Store was to become unavailable there.

Financial institutions also sounded warnings. The International Monetary Fund no longer considered a Russian default improbable, and the World Bank also regarded a default by Russia and Belarus as likely.

Moscow's response

Russia answered with measures of its own. It introduced retaliatory sanctions against most foreign countries, exempting members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, and banned the export of more than 200 items, mostly technical and agricultural appliances, until the end of the year. The government also abolished penalties for patent theft where the patents were held by people or companies from countries it deemed "unfriendly", and was considering decriminalising software piracy from those countries.

The Central Bank of Russia limited withdrawals of US dollars, euros, British pounds and Japanese yen by Russian firms to the equivalent of $5,000, with larger sums requiring its permission. The withdrawn funds could be used only to cover overseas work trips.

Putin admitted that the sanctions had created problems for Russia, but called them illegitimate and warned the West that Russia would emerge stronger and solve them. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the economy as experiencing a shock and called the economic war against Russia absolutely unprecedented, adding that it was very hard to forecast anything.

Kyiv's own measures

In Ukraine, parliament began debating a law that would allow the forced seizure of all assets belonging to Russian citizens, as well as Ukrainians deemed by the courts or the National Security and Defense Council to be Russian collaborators. A bill approved the previous week had already allowed seizure of assets owned by the Russian government and Russian companies.

What the day showed

Taken together, the events of 10 March 2022 show diplomacy and economic pressure moving on separate tracks from the fighting. The Ankara meeting opened a channel at foreign-minister level and kept open the idea of a presidential meeting, yet shelling continued and aid could not reach Mariupol. Meanwhile, sanctions, corporate exits and Russian countermeasures were reshaping the economic landscape in ways that both sides openly acknowledged.