{"id":10905,"date":"2018-08-09T12:26:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T12:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10905"},"modified":"2018-08-09T12:26:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T12:26:12","slug":"russia-calls-new-us-sanctions-illegal-and-draconian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10905","title":{"rendered":"Russia calls new US sanctions illegal and ‘draconian’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Russia<\/a> condemned new US sanctions as “draconian” on Thursday after news of the measures sent the rouble tumbling to two-year lows and sparked a wider asset sell-off.<\/p>\n

The US State Department said on Wednesday it would impose new sanctions by the end of August after determining that Moscow used a nerve agent<\/a> against a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain. It was an allegation Russia has repeatedly denied.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moscow has long cast the accusations as a Western plot to damage its reputation and provide a convenient pretext for more sanctions.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking to reporters on a conference call, said the US move was “absolutely unfriendly”.<\/p>\n

“Making a linking to these events is for us unacceptable and such restrictions like those passed by the American side earlier … are absolutely illegal and do not correspond to international law,” said Peskov.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia’s embassy in the United States<\/a> said Washington’s findings against it in the Skripal case were not backed by evidence, also describing them as “far-fetched”<\/span>.<\/p>\n

“We have grown accustomed to not hearing any facts or evidence,” an embassy statement said.<\/span><\/p>\n

‘Police state’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A senior Russian legislator denounced the sanctions as “lynch law”.<\/p>\n

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said the US is behaving like a “police state, threatening and torturing a suspect to get evidence”.<\/p>\n

Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service, and his 33-year-old daughter were found slumped unconscious on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury in March after a liquid form of the Novichok type of nerve agent was applied to his home’s front door.<\/span><\/p>\n

European countries and the United States expelled 100 Russian diplomats after the attack in the strongest action by President Donald Trump against Russia since he came to office.<\/span><\/p>\n

Western sanctions have already drastically reduced Western involvement in Russian energy and commodities projects, including large-scale financing and exploration of hard-to-recover and deep-water resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the government and central bank had the tools to maintain financial stability and would use them if necessary.<\/p>\n

Russia’s economy had demonstrated it was stable in the face of past sanctions, as well as fluctuations in the oil price, he said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia condemned new US sanctions as “draconian” on Thursday after news of the measures sent the rouble tumbling to two-year lows and sparked a wider asset sell-off. The US State Department said on Wednesday it would impose new sanctions by the end of August after determining that Moscow used a nerve agent against a former…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}