London: Russia has warned that there will be a reaction if the European Union imposes fresh economic sanctions against it over the crisis in Ukraine.
The comment by the Russian foreign ministry came as a tentative ceasefire agreed between Kiev and separatist rebels appeared to be largely holding on Saturday.
The EU has said the sanctions, targeting more Russian individuals, will come in on Monday but could be suspended if Russia withdraws troops from east Ukraine and continues to observe the current truce agreed in Minsk.
But the Russian foreign ministry said that by announcing new sanctions the EU’s leadership “is practically sending a signal of direct support to the ‘party of war’ in Kiev, which is not happy with the results of the Minsk meeting”.
The statement continued: “If they are passed, there will undoubtedly be a reaction from our side.”
Defence sector targeted
According to an EU diplomat, the new sanctions would target Russia’s access to capital markets and the trade in arms and defence technology.
“If certain processes get under way, we are prepared to suspend sanctions” against Russia, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had said on Friday.
Both sides in the Ukraine conflict claimed on Saturday that the other had violated the ceasefire.
Colonel Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national security council, said rebels had fired at Ukrainian forces on 10 occasions after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect, but all the incidents he detailed were on Friday night.
There was relative quiet in Donetsk, the largest city controlled by the Russia-backed separatists, after several months of daily shelling in residential areas, the Associated Press reported.
Alexander Zakharchenko, the top separatist leader in the city, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the ceasefire was violated by two rounds of shelling in the town of Amvrosiivka, about 50km south-east of Donetsk.
“At this time the ceasefire agreement is not being fully observed,” he said. Lysenko said Ukrainian forces were strictly observing the ceasefire and suggested that Zakharchenko’s claim was a provocation.
No shooting or shelling
Ukraine had received information that the rebels on Friday “were preparing a press conference for today [in which] one of the points was the condemnation of the Ukrainian military for violation of the ceasefire. So we do not exclude that they tried to provoke the Ukrainian military to fire,” Lysenko said.
Earlier on Saturday, the mayor’s office in Donetsk said there had been no reports of shooting or shelling there although some shelling had been heard late on Friday afternoon.
Ukraine, Russia and the Kremlin-backed separatists signed the ceasefire deal in Minsk on Friday. The negotiators also agreed on the withdrawal of all heavy weaponry, the release of all prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid to devastated cities in eastern Ukraine.
If the ceasefire holds, it will be a landmark achievement for both sides. Fighting between pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian government troops has ravaged the already teetering Ukrainian economy, claimed at least 2,600 civilian lives and left hundreds of thousands homeless, according to United Nations estimates.
At the closing of a two-day Nato summit in Wales on Friday, US president Barack Obama said he was hopeful the ceasefire would hold but was unsure the rebels would follow through and that Russia would stop violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
— Guardian News and Media 2014
