The European Parliament on Wednesday designated Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, arguing Moscow’s navy strikes on civilian targets equivalent to vitality infrastructure, hospitals, colleges and shelters violated worldwide regulation.

European lawmakers voted in favour of a decision calling Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

The transfer is essentially symbolic, because the European Union doesn’t have a authorized framework in place to again it up. At the identical time, the bloc has already imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged the United States and different international locations to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, accusing its forces of concentrating on civilians, which Moscow denies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has thus far refused to record Russia regardless of resolutions in each chambers of Congress urging him to take action.

The U.S. State Department presently names 4 international locations – Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria – as state sponsors of terrorism, that means they’re topic to a defence export ban and monetary restrictions.

In the EU, the parliaments of 4 international locations have thus far designated Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, in response to the European Parliamentary Research Service: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland.