All members of Russia’s Duma, parliament’s lower house, will be hit with EU sanctions, which typically involve travel bans and asset freezes.

“This package of sanctions that has been approved by unanimity by the member states will hurt Russia, and it will hurt a lot,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told a news conference alongside France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at a meeting in Paris.

“We will raise the level of sanctions in proportion to Russian behavior,” Borrell noted.

He added that the sanctions package would also affect the Russian finances, limiting Moscow’s ability to access EU’s financial markets, but did not provide any further details on that.

The official has warned that the sanctions may even get worse depending on Russia’s actions in relation to Ukraine.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to continue to work together to target those who supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “aggressive approach”, Johnson’s office has announced.

“The leaders agreed they needed to continue to work in lockstep to target Russian individuals and entities bankrolling President Putin’s aggressive approach,” a spokesperson for Johnson stated after the British and French leaders spoke by phone.

“Russia’s actions don’t just threaten Ukraine’s sovereignty, but are a blatant attack on freedom and democracy, the leaders agreed,” the spokesperson added.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said Russia has now moved “from covert attempts to destabilize Ukraine to overt military action.”

“Moscow has now moved from covert attempts to destabilize Ukraine to overt military action. This is a serious escalation by Russia, and a flagrant violation of international law,” Stoltenberg stated at a news conference in Brussels following a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission.

He called the Russia-Ukraine crisis “the most dangerous moment in European security for a generation.”

“NATO is resolute and united in its determination to protect and defend all allies. In the last weeks, allies have deployed 1000s more troops to eastern part of the alliance and placed more on standby. We have over 100 jets at high alert and there are more than 120 allies’ ships at the sea from the high north to the Mediterranean,” he added.

“We will continue to do whatever is necessary to shield the alliance from aggression,” he continued.

The United States has said Russia’s deployment of troops into two Moscow-backed, self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine amounts to the “beginning of an invasion”.

Deputy NSA Jonathan Finer told CNN on Tuesday that Washington’s response would be “swift and severe”, with the White House understood to be preparing sanctions.

Earlier, the United Kingdom slapped sanctions on Russian banks and high net worth individuals while Germany, another of Kyiv’s Western allies, halted the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Moscow has brushed aside the threat of retaliatory measures from the West, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Russia was accustomed to sanctions.

The authorization grants Putin the right to use Russian forces abroad “in accordance with the principles and norms of international law,” the Senate’s resolution, which was released to the media, shows.

The document does not impose any specific limits on the use of the military, with the number of troops, as well as “the areas of their activity, their goals, and length of stay outside Russia” to be decided by the president “in accordance with the Constitution.”

The decision was taken after Russia recognized the breakaway Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine.

Ahead of the vote, representatives of the committees noted they supported the authorization, suggesting that the troops could be sent to Donbass as peacekeepers.

Valentina Matvienko, the Speaker of the Russian Federation Council, stated the troops would “create normal conditions for people’s lives and ensure security” there.

Immediately after announcing the recognition of the DPR and the LPR on Monday, Putin signed bilateral friendship and cooperation treaties with each republic.

The treaties were ratified on Tuesday by both chambers of the Russian parliament, as well as by the legislatures in the DPR and the LPR.

Putin explained his decision in a televised address later in the day, pinning the blame on Kiev and claiming the Ukrainian authorities were seeking to end the years-long conflict by force rather than through negotiations.

“They are not interested in peaceful solutions – they want to start a Blitzkreig,” Putin said, adding, “Every day they are amassing troops in the Donbass.”

Putin’s decision was widely condemned by Western leaders, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg writing on Monday that it “undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and could be an attempt to “stage a pretext to invade Ukraine once again.”

The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, has warned “Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also announced on Tuesday that he was considering shuttering diplomatic relations with Moscow as a result of the decision. However, despite fears that Russia’s actions could lead to a full-blown attack on his country, he stated, “we believe there will be no war against Ukraine, and there will be no broad escalation on the part of the Russian Federation.”

On Tuesday, German media reported the EU is planning to bring sanctions against the more than 350 Russian MPs who voted to recognize the two breakaway Donbass republics.

Der Spiegel cited anonymous European officials who said that they were preparing measures that would hit every single lawmaker who voted to recognize the territories’ independence. The sanctions would also go after banks located in Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) and make it so that free trade agreements between Kiev and Brussels will not operate in the DPR and LPR, which the EU still considers Ukrainian territory.

The sources added that the sanctions project could impose restrictions on the trade of Russian government bonds, and that the EU Council of Ministers would make a decision in the near future.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brushed off the threat of sanctions on Tuesday, saying the West would impose them regardless of events and describing the response to Russia’s recognition of two breakaway Ukrainian regions as predictable.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoma Maria Zakharova has also stated suggestions that there would have been no sanctions and condemnation from the West against Moscow if it had not recognized the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics are an illusion.

Putin has condemned Ukrainian authorities for effectively killing the Minsk agreements and stated that they had stopped existing long before Russia decided to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Putin went on to add that his decision to recognise the Donbass republics was dictated by Kiev’s open admission that it was not going to honour the Minsk agreements. He noted that there was nothing to wait for except the “genocide” of the people in Donbass.

“Yes, of course, now the Minsk agreements do not exist. So why should we implement them if we have recognised the independence of [the DPR and LPR],” Putin continued.

“This is the first tranche, the first barrage of what we are prepared to do,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament.

“Any assets they hold in the UK will be frozen and the individuals concerned will be banned from travelling here,” Johnson said of the individuals being sanctioned.

He took the steps after the Russian president said Moscow was going to recognise the independence of two breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine.

The sanctioned banks are Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and the Black Sea Bank, Johnson added. The three individuals are Gennady Timchenko, Igor Rotenberg and Boris Rotenberg.

He did not impose the complete package of sanctions the UK has prepared because Russia has not yet invaded new sovereign Ukrainian territory, but instead recognised self-proclaimed republics that have been under Russian-backed control.

The EU is expected to announce its own tough package on Tuesday afternoon.

The larger package, being coordinated with Washington and the EU, will be implemented if a full-scale invasion takes place.

No major oligarchs based in the UK have been affected by Monday’s announcements, and Labour urged Johnson to go further, saying a threshold had been breached, demanding a full package now so Putin does not believe the benefits outweigh the costs.

Johnson accused Putin of calmly and deliberately plotting the destruction of a nation of 44 million people, deploying absurd and mystical reasons.

He stated, “In a single inflammatory speech, he denied that Ukraine had any tradition of genuine statehood, claimed that it posed a direct threat to the security of Russia and hurled numerous other false accusations and aspersions.”

He noted Russian tanks and armed personnel carriers have “since been spotted” in the breakaway regions, adding, “The house should be in no doubt that the deployment of these forces in sovereign Ukrainian territory amounts to a renewed invasion of that country.”

“And by denying Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state and presenting its very existence as a mortal threat to Russia, Putin is establishing the pretext for a full-scale offensive,” he continued.

Earlier Johnson announced if an invasion went ahead Russian companies would be prevented from raising money on the London capital markets in Sterling or dollars and he also promised to unmask the Russian beneficial owners hiding behind a facade of shell companies and properties.

In total, 31 Russian companies are listed on the LSE, with a combined market value of £468bn, according to the data company S&P Global.

London-listed Russian oil, gas and mining companies paid their government £39bn in taxes in 2020. Revenue from such businesses is hugely important to the Putin regime: Russia spent £41.7bn on its military in 2019, 11.4% of government spending, according to the World Bank’s latest figures.