You're reading: Russia to prepare measures in response to new US, Canadian sanctions

 Moscow plans to work out measures in response to new U.S. and Canadian sanctions against Russia. 

“We recommend that Washington and Ottawa think about consequences of such actions. And we will explore response measures,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement posted on the ministry website on Dec.20

The U.S. and Canada have introduced new sanctions against Russian officials of various levels and extended restrictions on normal economic interaction, the ministry said.

“Reasonability of the initiators of such decisions causes growing concerns. However, even the most inveterate fans of sanctions sometimes have insights, although this happens not immediately: for instance, it has taken the White House half a century to acknowledge futility of its policy of Cuba’s sanction blockade. Okay, we’ll wait as well,” Lukashevich said.

“Crimea is a longstanding and inseparable part of Russia. The residents of Crimea today are together with all of the Russian people, who have never caved in and will not cave in to external pressure,” he said.

In commenting on new sanctions against the leaders and other representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, Lukashevich regretted that “it has become clear once again that the West is absolutely uninterested in settling the conflict in the southeastern part of Ukraine.”

“Kyiv’s constructive dialogue with Donetsk and Luhansk should be the main precondition for this, while sanctions are targeted at undermining the political process. The sly speculations on care about Ukraine’s territorial integrity and importance of observing the Minsk agreements cannot conceal an obvious thing: yet another portion of sanction exhausts in the U.S. and Canada is intended to support the Kyiv war party,” Lukashevich said.