LVIV, Ukraine — President Volodymyr Zelensky has sanctioned 37 Russian groups and 108 people including a former prime minister and a former education minister and said he aimed to fight wartime abductions of children from Ukraine and other “Russian terror.”

“We are increasing the pressure of our state onto them and each of them must be held responsible for what they have done,” he said in his nightly video address on Saturday, after his office issued corresponding decrees with his signature.

Mr. Zelensky did not associate specific individuals or groups with particular wrongdoings. The decrees showed a range of 10-year penalties against individuals and five-year penalties against non-profit groups including one named in English as the “Russian Children’s Foundation.”

Mr. Zelensky said in his address that the list included “those involved in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory” and individuals who “in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine.”

Some of the newly-sanctioned people, which included many with Russian citizenship, had previously been punished with separate or similar penalties.

Those included Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science who had his Ukrainian citizenship stripped from him in February, and ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

With former President Viktor Yanukovich, Mr. Azarov previously had assets and property frozen among other penalties. The two men fled Ukraine for Russia in 2014 after a crackdown on street protests that killed more than 100 demonstrators in Kyiv.

Other individuals penalized on Saturday included Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, and Leonid Pasechnik, whom Vladimir Putin appointed head of Luhansk, the eastern Ukrainian region Russia annexed in 2022.

The sanctioned Russian groups included several whose names or websites indicate they work with children.

One sanctioned group was named Kvartal Lui, which matches an organization with a website which says its founder is Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, herself sanctioned by Kyiv in October 2022.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague this month issued an arrest warrant against Lvova-Belova, along with President Vladimir Putin, accusing them of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky’s new list also sanctioned the executive director of Kvartal Lui, Sofia Lvova-Belova. Her older sister, Maria Lvova-Belova, has said children were taken to shelter them from violence and denied committing any war crime.

Kyiv says about 20,000 children have been removed to Russia or Russian-held territory without the consent of family or guardians, which it says amounts to a war crime that meets the UN treaty definition of genocide.

Yale University published research on Thursday saying more than 2,400 children aged between six and 17 had also been taken to 13 facilities across Russian-allied Belarus.

The report, from a group that receives US State Department funding, said that the transports across Russian territory to its western neighbor were “ultimately coordinated” between Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Mr. Zelensky’s decrees upheld a decision by the National Security and Defense Council to issue sanctions with an array of penalties including blocking assets, trade, transit, leasing, removal of capital, land purchases and other financial and economic activities. — Reuters

TOKUNOSHIMA, Japan — Japanese marines in amphibious assault vehicles stormed an island beach at the edge of the East China Sea on Sunday in a simulated attack to dislodge invaders from territory that Tokyo worries is vulnerable to attack from China.

As tensions run high with neighbors China, Russia and North Korea, the drill on the southwest island of Tokunoshima capped an 11-day series of exercises nationwide dubbed 05JX, meant to show the readiness of ground, sea and air forces to defend Japan’s territory and infrastructure, including nuclear power plants.

“The goal of JX is to show that if there is an emergency situation resulting from an attack, that we are able respond in a joint way,” General Yoshihide Yoshida, chief of staff of the Self-Defence Forces’ Joint Staff, said after observing the drill on Tokunoshima.

Ground Self-Defense Force amphibious assault vehicles launched from two Maritime Self-Defense Force landing ships anchored offshore. Other troops arrived in semi-inflatable rubber boats, with heavy equipment carried to shore on military hovercraft.

Unlike many of the beaches along Japan’s southwest island chain stretching toward Taiwan, the one on Tokunoshima does not have a coral reef that would make military operations more difficult.

The scope and pace of military exercises in Japan are likely to increase over the next few years, including with US forces, after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in December unveiled the country’s biggest military buildup since World War II, with a pledge to double defense spending over five years.

Mr. Kishida has warned that East Asia could be the next Ukraine, if China, emboldened by Russia’s assault on its neighbor, attacks Taiwan.

The 43.5 trillion yen ($290 billion) in planned spending will go to new weapons such as longer-range missiles as well as to increase stocks of spare parts and munitions to fight a sustained conflict.

But the yen’s sharp decline this year has forced Japan to cut back on some planned purchases, including new models of the U.S.-made Chinook helicopters that Japan’s military used in the Tokunoshima drill. — Reuters