Russia: EU Should Be Ashamed of Sanctions

The ministry's comment came on Tuesday, hours after the EU imposed asset freezes and travel bans on 15 more names of Russian and pro-Moscow Ukrainian officials, including Russia's deputy prime minister, deputy chairman of state Duma and chief of staff of armed forces, Reuters reported.

"Instead of forcing the Kiev clique to sit at the table with southeastern Ukraine to negotiate the future structure of the country, our partners are doing Washington's bidding with new unfriendly gestures aimed at Russia," the foreign ministry said.

"If this is how someone in Brussels hopes to stabilise the situation in Ukraine, it is obvious evidence of a complete lack of understanding of the internal political situation ... and a direct invitation for the local neo-Nazis to continue to conduct lawlessness and reprisals against the peaceful population of the southeast," it said in a statement. "Are they not ashamed?"

Grigory Karasin, the deputy foreign minister, said separately that US and EU sanctions were "an absolutely counterproductive, trite measure that will force the already critical situation in Ukraine into a dead end," state-run RIA news agency reported.

Russia has not yet announced any steps in response to the new sanctions.

Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, the de facto mayor of a separatist-held town Slovyansk, said on Tuesday that he would discuss the release of detained military observers with the West only if the EU dropped sanctions against rebel leaders.

The six observers were in Ukraine under the auspises of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a democracy watchdog. They were detained last week after separatists said they had found a Ukrainian spy with them.

Meanwhile, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, told the Wall Street Journal late on Monday that the Ukraine crisis was centered on the motivations of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.