EU extends Russia sanctions for another 6 months

Russian Federation earlier imposed a ban on imported food from Ukraine, which would also take effect on January 1.

“After the initial round of sanctions, the Kremlin’s aggression only grew: Russia formally absorbed Crimea and upped its financial and military support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine“, Ashford wrote in the upcoming January/February edition of Foreign Affairs.

It is imperative to state that the European Union has separately imposed visa bans and asset freezes targeting several associates of President Putin and others believed to have played a vital role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that Moscow was considering countermeasures in response to the expanded US list.

Mr Medvedev also confirmed that Moscow will take legal action over Kyiv’s failure to repay the $3 billion bond.

For months, Kyiv had been threatening not to pay the debt – arranged by former President Viktor Yanukovych two years ago -arguing that it was a “private” arrangement, not the government-to-government deal Moscow claims.

Yanukovich fled to Russian Federation in early 2014 after protesters were shot on the streets. It is now scrapping its preferential terms for Ukrainian exporters.

Russian Federation says it has tried unsuccessfully to reach agreement on the issue “peacefully and in a mutually beneficial way”.

“We were quite close-had there been a will, we would have come to an agreement”, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmströ m said after the meeting.

“We maintain that compliance with the Minsk Accords is a duty of at least four actors: Kyiv, the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Russian Federation and the European Union”. A new legally binding accord would “reopen” the DCFTA, the Commission said, but “the DCFTA can not be amended – neither directly nor indirectly”.

Ukraine’s Trade Representative, Natalia Mykolska, said in an interview with the Yevropeiska Pravda (European Truth) publication.

According to Chizhov, Russia-EU commodity turnover decreased at about 30 percent in the first nine months of 2015.

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