The European Union has extended sanctions against Russia over Ukraine

Since 2015, the sanctions have been extended every six months. The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said that Brussels will continue to demand that Moscow implement the Minsk agreements

 The European Union has extended sanctions against Russia because of Ukraine

The European Union has extended economic sanctions against Russia imposed in 2014 in connection with the annexation of the Crimea and the war in the Donbass. This was announced by the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, on Twitter.

“We have extended our economic sanctions against Russia: Moscow must make its contribution and ensure the full implementation of the Minsk agreements, ” Michel wrote.

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He noted that the EU will adhere to a unified approach to Russia based on five principles, and in the near future will work out new formats and conditions for dialogue with Moscow.

We are talking about sectoral sanctions aimed at the Russian energy sector, the financial sector and the defense industry. They prohibit companies from accessing European capital markets, prohibit the export and import of weapons and dual-use goods, trade in technologies for oil production.

The sanctions were first introduced in July 2014, since then the EU authorities have been extending them every six months. Before that, they check how Russia is implementing the Minsk agreements, the purpose of which is to settle the war in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it is not a party to the conflict, therefore it should not implement the Minsk agreements. Kiev considers Russia an aggressor country and claims that the authorities of the unrecognized DPR and LPR are supported by Moscow.

Russia and Ukraine regularly exchange accusations of unwillingness to implement the Minsk agreements. Kiev believes that this format for the settlement of the armed conflict is outdated and should be revised.

The Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Alexey Danilov, said in June that a sufficient reason for revising the agreements is the fact that Russian passports were issued to residents of the Donbass republics. He explained that holding elections in the region (which is one of the points of the Minsk agreements), when 630 thousand people have Russian passports,is a strange situation.

President Vladimir Putin previously stated that Kiev does not want to fulfill its part of the agreements. “The current Kiev authorities simply have no desire to fulfill the Minsk agreements,” the head of state said. He explained his words by the fact that the Ukrainian authorities, under the conditions of “Minsk”, should conduct a direct dialogue with the leaders of the LPR and DPR, but they do not want to make contact.

Источник rbc.ru

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