MOSCOW: Russia said on Saturday that it has the right to give a proportional response to the sanctions imposed by the European Union over Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
On Friday, the EU imposed new sanctions as it added the name of 12 Russian and Crimean officials to a list of people targeted by EU asset freezes and travel bans. The list now contains the names of 33 individuals.
“It’s a pity that the European Council made a decision that is divorced from reality,” the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on the ministry’s website on Saturday.
“We believe it is time to return to the platform of pragmatic cooperation that reflects the interests of our countries. However, of course, the Russian side reserves itself the right to give a comparable answer to the actions taken.”
Russia welcomes EU decision to send monitoring mission to Ukraine
In a separate statement, the Russian foreign ministry welcomed the decision by the EU to send a monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to Ukraine and expressed hope that the mission could help resolve the internal Ukrainian crisis. It said, however, that the observers are excluded from Crimea which is now officially part of Russia.
“The mission’s mandate reflects the new political and legal realities and does not apply to Crimea and Sevastopol, which became a part of Russia,” the foreign ministry said in its statement.
On Friday, the Russian Federation agreed to join the 56 other members of the OSCE in a consensual decision to send a six-month monitoring mission to Ukraine.
