Putin: Sanctions could hamper peace efforts

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday new Western sanctions against Russia are intended to disrupt peace efforts in eastern Ukraine and that Moscow is considering retaliatory measures.

Speaking to journalists after a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Putin said the sanctions looked "a bit strange" in view of the peace drive including a cease-fire.

"When the situation is moving toward a peaceful resolution, steps are taken which are aimed at disrupting the peace process," said Putin in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan.

"We've long been convinced that sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy are inefficient and practically never bring about their desired result - even in relation to small countries. Of course, a policy of sanctions inflicts certain damage, including to those who use them."

The European Union adopted further sanctions on Russia on Friday, restricting access to financing for defense and energy firms and top Russian banks, and freezing the assets of senior politicians and rebel leaders.

The United States followed suit with its own tougher sanctions to increase pressure on Putin over Russia's annexation of Crimea and the rising tensions over separatism in eastern Ukraine.

However, the drive for tougher EU sanctions faces growing opposition from a number of EU countries that fear retaliation from Russia, the bloc's biggest energy supplier.

In a move to assuage critics, the EU has said it could lift some, or even all, of the sanctions within weeks - if Moscow abides by a fragile truce in Ukraine and respects a peace plan.

Russia has already banned all imports of food from the United States and all fruits and vegetables from Europe in response to previous Western sanctions.

Its response to the latest Western sanctions may include caps on used car imports and other consumer goods, a Kremlin official was quoted as saying on Thursday.

At the same time it is stepping up sanctions, the EU will offer Russia more time to adjust to a European trade pact with Ukraine at talks in Brussels on Friday, diplomats say, moving to ease tensions over an accord at the center of the crisis.

The latest sanctions include asset freezes and travel bans on Igor Lebedev and other deputy speakers of the Russian lower house of parliament; on Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist politician,; and on a number of leaders of the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

'Historic' agreement

The new sanctions bar EU firms from providing services such as drilling and well-testing for deep-water oil exploration and production, Arctic oil exploration and production, and shale oil projects in Russia.

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said on Friday that the Ukrainian and European parliaments would meet on Tuesday to ratify a trade and political association agreement.

Poroshenko called the planned simultaneous ratifications a "historic moment" that defines his country's future.

"We are also hoping in the very near future for a special status of a non-NATO-member ally," he told an international conference in Kiev.

US President Barack Obama has rejected direct military involvement in Ukraine, although Western allies are discussing providing more nonlethal military assistance for Ukraine's underfunded and poorly trained military.

Reuters - AFP

Members of rebel forces (right and center) who are prisoners of war stand by the side of a road as they wait to be exchanged, north of Donetsk, Ukraine, on Friday. Marko Djurica / Reuters