BRUSSELS, August 31 (RIA Novosti) – The European Union is still trammeled by inertia of sanctions and blindly accepts unsubstantiated claims about the presence of Russian forces in Ukraine, Russia’s envoy to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said Sunday.
“The EU is still in captivity of sanctions inertia. I gather most leaders of the European countries lately publicly acknowledged, first, the ineffectiveness of sanctions, and secondly, that it's a dead end. But it seems that they haven’t thought of anything else anyway," the envoy said.
“Even worse that they took the statements delivered by the Ukrainian president in Brussels and stories which were spread by NATO representatives also here in Brussels without question and, in fact, blindly accepted unsubstantiated claims about the presence of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine,” Chizhov added.
“Although the development of the Ukrainian crisis during recent months should have taught them to sort truth from fiction and reality from fantasies of Kiev and some of his patrons," the Russia diplomat added.
On Sunday night, European leaders requested the European Commission and the European External Action Service to present within a week a new set of sanctions against Russia, promising to impose them if the situation in Ukraine remains the same or worsens.
Relations between Russia and the West have deteriorated in regard to the situation in Ukraine. The West has repeatedly accused Russia of building up forces on its border with eastern Ukraine and supplying independence supporters with weapons, a claim Moscow has rejected.
In late July, the European Union and the United States proceeded from individual sanctions imposed on a number of people and companies to penalties on whole sectors of the Russian economy. In response, Russia limited food imports from countries that imposed sanctions on it, namely the US, the EU member states, Canada, Australia and Norway.
