You're reading: Finnish minister: Truce in Ukraine not enough to abandon new EU sanctions against Russia

The additional sanctions against Russia prepared by the EU will come into effect in the coming days if there are no new steps to deescalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Finnish Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade Lenita Toivakka has said.

“It’s clear the sanctions will come into force in the next few days
if Russia doesn’t do more than it has so far [to normalize the situation
in Ukraine],” the Bloomberg agency quoted Toivakka as saying.

According to her, reaching peace isn’t enough to withdraw the sanctions.

She said that mutual sanctions by the EU and Russia posed a considerable threat to Finland.

“The sanctions spiral is dangerous – we don’t know what industries
would be hit by possible Russia counter-sanctions,” she said, and added
that the main danger was the impossibility to find out how long the
crisis might last.

The Finnish minister said that her country hadn’t opposed the
additional sanctions against Russia drawn up by the EU. According to
her, Finland agreed to these sanctions in the way they had been
suggested. A huge amount of preparation work was conducted, and Finnish
officials actively worked not to make sanctions’ negative impact on
Finland unreasonably high, she added.

Earlier, the EU agreed to delay the imposition of the sanctions
against Russia. Finland was one of the countries supporting this
decision.