Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs calls for stronger sanctions against Russia
The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Dion, stated that Ottawa favors maintaining and strengthening sanctions against Russia, Maclean’s reported. Speaking at the opening conference at the University of Ottawa in Canada, the Minister reported about the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia due to the fact that a large number of countries supported the sanctions.
“Sanctions, imposed against Russia because of the situation in Ukraine, are effective only because a large number of countries imposed them. Canada continues to demand that these collective sanctions remain in force or even strengthened,” Dion said. In March, Canada imposed additional sanctions against 10 Russian companies and two citizens of Russia.
The list of Russian companies, which were subjected to Canadian sanctions, includes the following companies: Inserbank, MosOblBank, Volgogradneftemash, Izhevsk Mechanical Plant, Izhmash, Tehnopromeksport, Tehmash, Roselectronika and Schwabe holding company, which is a part of Rostec and Tehnopromeksport.
The Deputy General Director for commercial issues of concern “Kalashnikov”, Edward Joffe, and the top manager of this concern, Alexander Omelchenko, were also added to the list of sanctions. The additional sanctions were imposed in order to increase the pressure on Russia to implement the Minsk Agreements and to demonstrate that Canada doesn’t recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia.