French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that a new package of the European Union sanctions was already being prepared in response to the referendums on joining Russia taking place in the self-proclaimed Donbas republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhia regions of Ukraine
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th September, 2022) French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that a new package of the European Union sanctions was already being prepared in response to the referendums on joining Russia taking place in the self-proclaimed Donbas republics and the Kherson and Zaporozhia regions of Ukraine.
"I want to repeat in Kiev what we have said in New York on the sidelines of the meetings of the General Assembly and during Security Council meetings; if Russia goes ahead with organizing these illegal referendums, well, there will be sanctions that follow from that," the diplomat stated during a conference in Kiev broadcast by French broadcaster BFM tv.
Colonna specified that EU member states had not waited for the outcome of the polls to start elaborating a new set of sanctions. These would be "very certainly both individual, to target those responsible for these illegal operations, and would affect other sectors that were not under sanctions," she indicated.
Referendums on joining Russia have taken place from 23 to 27 September in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as well as the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics.
Since Russia started its special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, the EU has already imposed six sanction packages to serve as a deterrent.
