"[Russian Foreign Ministry] vows 'painful and acute' response to new USA sanctions - Interfax"
RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports that President Petro Poroshenko says Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko -- who is being held in Russia, where she has been accused of a role in the deaths of two Russian journalists caught in a mortar attack in eastern Ukraine -- said yesterday during a long-sought meeting with a Ukrainian consul at her Voronezh detention center that she was captured by separatists in Ukraine, then handcuffed and hooded and taken to Russia.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry has posted a "comment" on its official website saying it is "disappointed that the European Union, contrary to its own interests, succumbed to the American administration's blackmail and has followed the path of sanctions with respect to Russia."
Here's the Kremlin's (so far partial) transcript of Putin's comments at a Brasilia press conference upon hearing the news of fresh U.S. sanctions. Amid an excoriation of Western measures related to Ukraine, the Russian president adds that "the door to the negotiation process for overcoming and getting past this situation remains open."
Sanctions targets and broader Russian market taking it on the chin this morning.
h/t @RolandOliphant
President Poroshenko used a speech yesterday marking Ukraine's declaration of sovereignty 24 years ago to assure the country that while "today our country is enduring an ordeal, but I firmly believe the Ukrainian people respond with decency to all challenges. We will win. A sovereign and united Ukraine will become a modern European state -- wealthy and powerful," according to the National Security and Defense Council's Information-Analytical Center's website.