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Russia announced sanctions on Thursday against 322 Ukrainians and 68 Ukrainian companies, including much of Kiev’s political elite, amid tensions between the two countries over the ongoing war on their border.
The measures, published by prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, introduced restrictions against former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko — the frontrunner in next year’s presidential election — the eldest son of current president Petro Poroshenko, as well as several cabinet ministers and the leaders of Ukraine’s security apparatus.
Several businessmen were also sanctioned, including the billionaire Victor Pinchuk and Pavel Fuchs, a property developer who once unsuccessfully tried to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
The sanctions are a delayed response to Ukrainian sanctions against Russian officials and businessmen that Mr Poroshenko announced in May. Any bank accounts the Ukrainians had in Russia will be frozen and any Russian property they own seized, the Russian government said in a statement.
“Of course, we hope that sooner or later the political will to normalize relations with Russia will sprout on Ukrainian soil. For now we don’t see that,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
With political and trade ties at a nadir since Russia annexed Crimea and fomented the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the effect is likely to be symbolic.
“The Kremlin sanctions don’t worry me much. I don’t have any business here or there, nor could I,” Ms Tymoshenko wrote on Facebook.
