Russia Vows Response to U.S., European Sanctions

Date: 05 March 2021 - 21:26

News ID: ۸۸۲۳۹

MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- The Kremlin on Friday said it hoped "crazy” calls to sanction Russian business people would not become a reality and that it was planning ways to best protect Russia’s interests, its citizens and businesses.
The Kremlin said it was closely following media reports about a possible new round of U.S. sanctions.
Moscow will soon publish a list of U.S. citizens it will take measures against in response to the sanctions, the TASS news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying on Friday.
The Kremlin has shrugged off new Western sanctions over Western-backed blogger Alexei Navalny as unfounded and pointless, but warned that Moscow will retaliate.
U.S. president Joe Biden’s administration sanctioned seven Russian officials on Tuesday, along with more than a dozen government entities.
It coordinated the move with the European Union, which expanded its own sanctions on Tuesday.
Commenting on the U.S. and the EU decisions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the sanctions against top officials that included a freeze on their bank accounts duplicated Russia’s own law that bans them from having financial and other assets abroad.
Speaking with reporters, he said: "These people don’t make foreign trips anyway and they don’t have the right to open accounts in foreign banks or have any other foreign assets.”
At the same time, he added that the U.S. and EU restrictions "represent meddling in Russia’s internal affairs” and are "absolutely unacceptable, inflicting significant damage to the already poor ties”.
Peskov warned that Russia would now choose a "response that would best serve our own interests”, adding that the relevant state agencies would draft their proposals and submit them to the Kremlin.
"The principle of reciprocity in relations between states can’t be abandoned,” he said.
Navalny fell sick on August 20 during a domestic flight in Russia and was flown to Berlin for treatment two days later.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from the poisoning.
Last month, Navalny was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany.
The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny was last week sent to serve his sentence in a prison outside Moscow.