11:34 16.02.2019

EU to approve "Azov sanctions" package against Russia next week – Poroshenko

2 min read
EU to approve "Azov sanctions" package against Russia next week – Poroshenko

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that the European Union will approve the "Azov sanctions" package against the Russian Federation next week.

"And there is no doubt that in the coming days, at the beginning of next week, sanctions in Brussels in coordination with Ukraine will definitely be adopted," he told reporters in Munich on Friday.

Poroshenko said that the issue of "Azov sanctions package" was discussed with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations James Risch.

"Today the sanctions project consists of 124 pages, and this will be the price that Russia has to pay for the act of aggression against Ukraine [in the neutral waters of the Black Sea]," he noted.

The president also instructed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin to hold a meeting with "Ukrainian partners" on Sunday and discuss the preliminary coordination of actions regarding the introduction of sanctions.

According to the Western media, the EU agreed on sanctions against eight Russians because of the incident with the Ukrainian sailors.

On November 25, 2018, Russian border guards used weapons to stop three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Yany Kapu tug and the Berdiansk and Nikopol armored gunboats, which were en route from Odesa to Mariupol near the Kerch Strait. The vessels were escorted to Kerch.

Courts in Simferopol and Kerch remanded the 22 sailors and two Ukrainian Security Service officials in custody until January 25, 2019.

In late November, the Ukrainians were transferred to Moscow. The court extended all the Ukrainians' arrests until April 24.

Kyiv considers the detained sailors prisoners of war.

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