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MOSCOW – European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia undermines the peace process to solve the Ukraine crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday.
“As the peace process in Ukraine is going on track, such decisions mean that the EU chose to disrupt it,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s TV channel Russia 1.

Russia would react to the sanctions “in a calm and appropriate way, to protect its own interests in the first hand,” the Interfax news agency quoted the minister as saying.

Rostec, Russia’s state-controlled defence-industrial conglomerate, said later that the sanctions would not affect the company’s operations and sales, while Russian state-owned Sberbank said major Russian banks would hardly be impacted.

Earlier in the day, the EU announced that further restrictive measures against Russia’s financial, defence and energy sectors came into force yesterday morning upon the publication of the legal acts in the EU Official Journal.

Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Thursday that his country still considers EU sanctions illegitimate.

Russia regrets that the EU “still prefers imposing sanctions rather than making practical contributions to the peace settlement in Ukraine,” the spokesman said, adding that Russia would continue to promote the fulfilment of the current peace plan and stabilisation of the situation.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama warned Thursday that the United States will deepen and broaden sanctions in Russia’s financial, energy, and defence sectors “in response to its illegal actions in Ukraine.”

Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the Russian State Duma, or the lower house of parliament, said yesterday that the sanctions to be imposed by Washington are of no help to the current situation.

“It seems natural that everyone should try to help rather than break the fragile truce in Ukraine, but Washington is considering sanctions. Obviously, they took advantage of the internal conflict in Ukraine,” Naryshkin said.

Also yesterday, the cabinet of ministers of Ukraine proposed to introduce an entry ban for Russian citizens who “support a military aggression against Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said earlier that the new EU sanctions showed “the EU’s unity and solidarity with Ukraine,” adding that the bloc gives priority to issues concerning Ukraine. – Xinhua.