Media: EU expands sanctions against Crimean officials
The European Union agreed on the introduction of new personal sanctions against Crimean officials, Reuters reports, indicating that this decision was based on the accession of the Crimea to Russia.
According to the newspaper Delfi, the decision was made at the request of Lithuania and was formally approved at a meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the Council of the European Union.
It was noted that the sanctions will affect the six deputies of the State Duma who were elected in the Crimea.
"It was at the initiative of Lithuania in regard to everything that is related to recent Russian aggression and the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, that sanctions should be implemented," Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Linas Linkevičius, said in a telephone interview with BNS from Bucharest.
During the parliamentary elections to the State Duma on September 8th, several deputies were elected in the Crimea. However, the EU has already announced sanctions against two of them after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Persons who fall under the sanctions announced by the EU are banned from entering the European Union and their accounts within the EU were frozen.
Six candidates from the United Russia party became deputies in the State Duma representing the Crimea. The Vice-Prime Ministers of the Crimea, Mikhail Sheremet and Ruslan Balbek, entered the Duma via the party, as well as the Prosecutor of the Republic of the Crimea, Natalia Poklonskaya. The head of the republic, Sergey Aksyonov, who heads the United Russia party on the peninsula, refused the deputy position.
EU countries do not recognize the Crimea's accession to Russia, which took place after the referendum in 2014, and call it an annexation. Previously, due to the accession of the peninsula, personal and sectoral sanctions have already been introduced. Companies that do business in the Crimea could also fall under the sanctions.