Obama declares new US sanctions on Russia

Reuters, Ukraine :US President Barack Obama announced new sanctions against some Russians on Monday to stop President Vladimir Putin from fomenting the rebellion in eastern Ukraine, but said he was holding broader measures against Russia’s economy “in reserve”.On the ground, pro-Moscow rebels showed no sign of curbing their uprising, seizing public buildings in another town in the east. Interfax news agency reported that the mayor of a further major eastern city, Kharkiv, had been shot and was undergoing an operation. It gave no details of the shooting.The new sanctions, to be outlined in detail later on Monday, will add more people and firms to a list announced last month of figures whose assets are frozen and who are denied visas to travel to the United States.Some high tech exports will also be targeted, Obama said. But the measures do not yet include the wider sanctions, like curbs on the Russian financial and energy sectors, that would do the most serious damage to Russia’s economy.”We are keeping in reserve additional steps that we could take should the situation escalate further,” Obama said, acknowledging that he did not know if the measures he has ordered so far will work. US officials have said the new list will include Putin’s “cronies” in the hope of changing his behavior.”The goal is not to go after Mr. Putin personally. The goal is to change his calculus with respect to how the current actions that he’s engaging in Ukraine could have an adverse impact on the Russian economy over the long haul,” Obama said in Manila during a trip to Asia.”To encourage him to actually walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes to diplomatically resolving the crisis in Ukraine.”Nevertheless, such measures have done nothing so far to deter Putin, who overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy last month to seize and annex Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and has since massed tens of thousands of troops on the frontier. He acted after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was ousted in February by protesters demanding closer links with Europe.