Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

Asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega on what the U.S. could do if sanctions imposed Tuesday don’t work, White House press secretary Jen Psaki laid out additional sanctions that the U.S. could still impose.

“Sanctions can take a number of formats, right?” Psaki said at Tuesday's press briefing. “Export controls is certainly one of them. There's many more sanctions that we have at our disposal. Swift, the SWIFT system is obviously significant, not in the first tranche, but there's a range of options that remain on the table for sanctions.”

While the U.S. said Tuesday that cutting Russia off from the international SWIFT financial system was still an option, it’s conceivable the Russians could find a way around SWIFT and move to other less-regulated payments systems.

Psaki also said sanctions are not intended to have "the harshest impact on the first day" but are "designed to have a squeezing impact over the course of time and we have many more escalatory steps that we could take.”

The top White House official crafting U.S. sanctions on Russia, Daleep Singh, also told reporters that the U.S. wasn't seeking to "max out on sanctions" but that "they're meant to prevent and deter a large-scale invasion of Ukraine that could involve the seizure of major cities, including Kyiv."

Psaki echoed Biden in saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Russian people on Monday “was rife with historical inaccuracy” and that Putin “made clear that he does not view Ukraine, not just the areas he recognized yesterday, but that the totality of Ukraine as an independent country.”

Notably, Biden did not mention personally targeting Putin on Tuesday, which he had previously said he was considering.

-ABC News' Ben Gittelson, Zunaira Zaki and Elizabeth Schultze

While President Joe Biden has made clear he is not considering sending U.S. troops into Ukraine, having said it would lead to war, a group of lawmakers sent him a letter late Tuesday to remind him that he must get authorization from Congress before he decides to engage the military in Ukraine.

The bipartisan oddball group of lawmakers who signed the letter includes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., among about three dozen others.

"If the ongoing situation compels you to introduce the brave men and women of our military into Ukraine, their lives would inherently be put at risk of Russia chooses to invade," read the letter, which Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., shared on Twitter. "Therefore, we ask that your decisions comport with the Constitution and our nation's laws by consulting with Congress to receive authorization before any such development."

Lawmakers wrote that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has been abused by previous presidents, and they noted that the act restricted Biden from not only engaging troops in battle but also from launching a "pre-emptive strike."

"Congress stands ready to deliberate over the potentially monumental implications of such scenarios," they said.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan

The European Union imposed Wednesday another slew of tough sanctions on Russia over its recognition of two pro-Russian separatist areas in eastern Ukraine.

The move is an attempt to deter Moscow from proceeding further withs its invasion of Ukraine and follows Tuesday's decision by Germany to halt the certification of a key natural gas pipeline to Russia.

The package of measures adopted by the Council of the EU were published online Wednesday and include a ban on the Russian state and its central bank from accessing the EU's capital and finance markets; sanctions against three Russian state banks; blacklisting all 351 members of the Russian parliament that voted earlier this week to ratify the decision to recgonize the separatist regions as independent; sanctions against 27 "high profile individuals and entities, including the Russian defense minister, top Kremlin officials and propagandists; and an import ban and restrictions on trade and investment, as well as a partial export ban on the two separatist areas.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

The United Nations General Assembly -- which includes all U.N. recognized governments -- is meeting Wednesday in its main hall to address the crisis created by Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, fresh from his meetings Tuesday with President Joe Biden and other top U.S. officials, addressed the hall as the first country, speaking after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. In a firm speech, Kuleba blasted Russia's recognition of its separatist areas as "independent" and deployment of troops there as an "attack on the United Nations" itself -- a "grim scenario which will throw us back to the darkest times of the 20th century."

"I warn every nation in this distinguished chamber: No one will be able to sit out this crisis," he said. "Your governments and your people will face painful consequences together with our government and our people," Kuleba told the chamber.

"The beginning of a large-scale war in Ukraine will be the end of the world order as we know it. If Russia does not get a severe, swift, and decisive response now, this will mean a total bankruptcy of the international security system and international institutions which are tasked with maintaining the global security order," he added. 

He warned other actors will be "inspired" by Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions and follow his lead -- turning the United Nations into the League of Nations, the early 20th-century international organization that was seen as feckless in stopping the Axis Powers in the lead up to World War II -- a history Kuleba directly referenced.

"We all read history books. We all watch movies about the mistakes politicians made in the run-up to 1914 and 1939, about the feats of our grandparents and the catastrophic price at which a revanchist ruler in Europe was defeated. There is no more important task today than to not repeat the mistakes of the past," he said.

To prevent that, Kuleba called for "decisive, immediate, and proportional action" by the international community -- not just condemnations and statements, but actions.

"These days, we have probably the last window of opportunity to do what Russia does not expect the United Nations and its member states to do -- demonstrate unprecedented ability and readiness to act in order to stop aggression," he said -- finishing by calling on members, regardless of their relations with one another individually, to do "your ultimate duty, to defend the charter of the United Nations."

-ABC News' Conor Finnegan