The Kremlin has prolonged for another year Russian counter-sanctions imposed on Ukraine and a group of western nations, reads an official statement published on the Russian government’s website on July 5.
The Kremlin renewed the sanctions in 2015 and 2016, and they will now run from January to December 2018. Russia first imposed them in 2014 after the western countries sanctioned Russia for invading and annexing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and for fomenting war in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Russia’s sanctions cover several types of goods, raw materials and agricultural products from Ukraine, the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United States, Norway, Albania, Montenegro, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
In the statement, the Russian government said it had prolonged the sanctions at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and for national security reasons.
“It is an economic counter move against states involved in imposing sanctions against Russia,” reads the statement.
On June 20, the same day Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with U.S. President Donald Trump, Washington broadened U.S. sanctions against Russia, including more influential individuals and companies from the country. For instance, the UK newspaper the Guardian reported that Evgeny Prigozhin, a chef from Saint Petersburg, dubbed “Putin’s cook,” had also been included on the sanctions list.
Prigozhin, who impressed Putin with his cooking talents in the 2000s, now owns a catering empire that carries out military contracts in Russia.
Ukraine and Russia, despite having placed sanctions on each other, actually increased mutual trade significantly in the first months of 2017 compared to the same period last year, according to the latest figures.
Trade increased despite the Kremlin continuing to wage a covert war against Ukraine in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russia set up proxy statelets in the spring of 2014.
Russia continues to send troops and weapons into Ukraine to defend the statelets, as well as providing them with funding, resources and political guidance, according to several newspaper investigations and leaked Kremlin documents.
Read the full story on the recent rise in Russian trade with Ukraine here.
