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MOSCOW. – European Union sanctions against Russia undermine 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 on 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 on 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”.  – Xinhua.