The goal of Russia’s “de facto blockade of Berdyansk and Mariupol” is to “economically suffocate Azov and eastern Ukraine,”

The goal of Russia’s “de facto blockade of Berdyansk and Mariupol” is to “economically suffocate Azov and eastern Ukraine,” says Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. To restore freedom of shipping, he told the Kyiv Post’s annual Tiger Conference, the US and the EU should apply blanket sanctions on Russian banks, suspend Nord Stream 2 pipeline until “Russian troops leave Ukraine,” create a standing NATO maritime force in the Black Sea, and provide Ukraine’s armed forces with real-time aerial intelligence and “land-based ship-killing missiles.”