Obama announces sanctions against 7 Russian officials after Crimea referendum

New York Daily News – by JAMES WARREN

WASHINGTON — Even after Russian state media warned of Putin’s ability to turn the U.S. into “radioactive ash,” an outraged President Obama slapped sanctions against Russian officials in response to Crimea’s vote to secede from Ukraine.

Obama said Monday there are “clear consequences” for Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine.  

In ratcheting up penalties against Russia, Obama continues to choose butter over guns as a strategy. There remains no suggestion that the U.S. or European Union will get involved militarily in the crisis.

Instead, a day after the seemingly rigged Crimean secession vote, Obama led an international show of outrage that singled out top Putin chums seen as helping Putin “undermine the sovereignty” of Ukraine, he said at the White House.

In all, the U.S. named seven Russians and four Ukrainians. In addition, the European Union has listed 21 individuals for sanctions but did not disclose those names.

Russian retaliation is likely as Obama and European Union counterparts expanded previously threatened sanctions. They added a variety of powerful individuals close to Putin, banning their travel and moving to block their international assets.

Appearing in the White House briefing room, Obama said his new executive order expanding sanctions is intended to underscore that “further provocation will only further isolate Russia.”

He called Sunday’s vote “a clear violation” of the Ukraine constitution and international law.

He said he remained hopeful that there’s still a diplomatic way out of the crisis.

But, he said, that must include Russia pulling its Crimean forces back to its long-standing military bases in Crimea. They have been massing closer to the Ukraine border.

“We have fashioned these sanctions to impose costs on named individuals who wield influence in the Russian government and those responsible for the deteriorating situation in Ukraine,” the White House said prior to Obama appearing in the briefing room, making a statement and not taking questions.

“We stand ready to use these authorities in a direct and targeted fashion as events warrant,” the formal statement declared.

What the White House claimed were “by far the most comprehensive sanctions” meted out against Russia since the Cold War ended included listing as targets Vladislav Surkov, a top Putin economic adviser known as the “gray cardinal,” and Sergey Glazyev, a top economic adviser.

No sanctions have been imposed on Putin or Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister who has been in frequent contact with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, and does need to travel to continue any diplomacy.

But those socked Monday also include Valentina Matviyenko, chairman of the upper house of the Russian Parliament, and Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister.

The new sanctions disclosed by Obama involved political figures in Crimea, who have been working in seeming lock step with Putin.

They include Sergei Aksyonov, the new prime minister, and Vladimir Konstantinov, the new speaker of Crimea’s Parliament.

Viktor F. Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president who was deposed in a popular uprising last month, was among others hit with sanctions.

Obama spoke to Putin over the weekend, telling the Russian president that he and his European allies were ready to impose “additional costs” on Moscow for violating Ukraine’s territory.

Then on Sunday, a Kremlin-backed journalist issued a stark warning to the United States about Moscow’s nuclear capabilities.

“Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash,” television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly current affairs show.

Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast.

Kiselyov was named by President Vladimir Putin in December as the head of a new state news agency whose task will be to portray Russia in the best possible light.

WITH NEWS WIRE SERVICES

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