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EU Freezes Talks With Russia on Cooperation Agreement, Visas

06 March 2014 19:25 (UTC +04:00)

After six hours of talks, the leaders of the 28 EU member states who gathered for the extraordinary meeting in Brussels agreed on a three-step series of sanctions to punish Russia for a contested military incursion in Ukraine’s Crimea region.

The leaders agreed that the punishment should start with an immediate suspension of talks on a new comprehensive economic and political pact with Russia.

“If there is no de-escalation, the EU will decide on additional measures, such as visa restrictions, asset freezes and cancellation of the Russia-EU summit,” Rompuy said.

Russian officials have earlier played down the importance of sanctions, with President Vladimir Putin saying such measures would cause mutual damage.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said his country’s response to any type of sanctions “will not necessarily be a proportionate one.”

Russia’s envoy to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said in an interview earlier this week that talks between Moscow and Brussels on a visa-free regime have already been “de-facto frozen by the EU.”