GENEVA: Numerous diplomats walked out on Tuesday when Russian foreign minister addressed the UN Human Rights Council.

From closed airspace to frozen assets, meanwhile, Western countries announced increasingly severe economic sanctions against President Vladimir Putin, his relatives and inner circle — and on the Russian economy. During the meeting of the UN human rights panel, diplomats filed out of the room when Sergei Lavrov’s pre-recorded video message began to be played.

“Thank you very much for this wonderful show of support to Ukrainians who are fighting for their independence,” Ukrainian Ambassador Yevheniia Filipenko, who led the walkout, told the crowd gathered around a large Ukrainian flag outside the chamber.

“Any invasion constitutes a violation of human rights... massive violations and civilian losses,” French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont said.

“It is important that the Human Rights Council shows with this walkout that it is united with Ukraine and with the people of Ukraine.”

The fresh walkout came less than an hour after diplomats all but emptied a nearby room at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva when Lavrov’s video speech was aired to the Conference on Disarmament, a body created in 1979 to try to stem the Cold War arms race.

More than any other area, the West has targeted Russia’s financial sector to limit the country’s capacity to fund the war. In the latest example, London decided to freeze the assets of all Russian banks in Britain. In another major blow to the Russian financial system, the country’s main banks have been excluded from the SWIFT messaging system, which allows banks to communicate rapidly and securely about transactions. The United States and European Union have gone even further by directly targeting Russia’s central bank, with a ban on all transactions with the bank. The sanction effectively freezes the assets held by the central bank in the United States, limiting its ability to use its large foreign exchange reserves to buy rubles and support the value of its currency.

Canada and Japan have announced a similar ban. The sanctions on the Russian financial sector are already being felt. Notably, there has been a dramatic decline in the value of the ruble, which has forced the Russian central bank to almost double its key interest rate, and threatens to bankrupt the European subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender.