BAKU, September 12. /ITAR-TASS/. European Union’s new set of sanctions imposed against Russia will have no serious impact on Russian arms exports, a senior official with the state-owned high-tech corporation Rostec said on Friday.

A new package of EU sanctions against Russian companies and officials, including Rostec chief Sergei Chemezov, came into force on Friday.

“According to our forecasts and conclusions, as well as according to our tasks within the frames of the import substitution [program], we are not expecting a serious impact” as a result of the new sanctions, Sergei Goreslavsky, a deputy director general of Rostec, said.

According to the company’s official website, “Rostec is a Russian industrial company consisting of 663 organizations, which also includes 22 direct management companies and 13 holding companies, five of which specialize in the manufacture of civilian products, and eight, in the manufacture of products for the military and industrial sectors. Rostec organizations are located in 60 regions of the Russian Federation. Company products are delivered to markets in more than 70 countries.”

New sanctions list

The so-called “black list” of EU sanctions published by the organization’s Official Journal on Friday includes major Russian energy and defense companies as well as officials from Russia and Ukraine.

The European Union has banned debt financing for energy companies Rosneft, Transneft and Gazprom Neft, as well as for the defense consortiums — Uralvagonzavod, Oboronprom and the United Aircraft Corporation.

Restrictions for borrowings and investments were toughened for Russian banks Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank, VEB and Rosselkhozbank. The five banks are not listed by their names, as the list has remained unchanged from the earlier version of sanctions of July 31.

Supplies of European dual-purpose technologies are banned for nine more defense institutions - the Sirius Concern, Stankoinstrument, Khimkompozit, the Kalashnikov Concern, the Tula Arms Plant, Technologii Mashinostroyeniya, Vysokotochnye Kompleksy, the Almaz-Antei Concern, and Bazalt.

Moreover, the EU blacklisted 24 more Russian and Ukrainian officials expending the list to 119 names. The list now includes mentioned above head of Rostec Chemezov, Donetsk People’s Republic Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko, Russian flamboyant lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky as well as four deputy speakers of the Russian parliament and other officials.

The West started to impose sanctions on Russia in March 2014 over the events in Ukraine. First, an early EU summit stalled the talks on a visa-free regime and a new base agreement on Russia-EU cooperation. Further on the sanctions were grouped into three categories - personal, corporate and sectoral.

By the beginning of September some 420 Russian individuals and 143 companies had been put on the sanction lists of the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Switzerland and Norway.

Reciprocal measures

In response to Western sanctions, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on August 6 to ban for one year the imports of agricultural, raw and food products from the countries, which imposed sanctions against Russia.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced on August 7 that the Russian government imposed a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United States and Norway.

The list of the banned products includes cattle meat (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), pork (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), poultry meat and all poultry edible by-products, salted meat, pickled meat, dried meat, smoked meat, fish and shell fish, clams and other water invertebrates, milk and dairy products, vegetables, edible roots and tuber crops, fruits and nuts, sausage and analogous meat products, meat by-products or blood, as well as products made of them, ready-to-eat products including cheeses and cottage-cheese based on vegetable fats.

Moscow repeatedly rejected the threats of broader sanctions saying the language of penalties is counterproductive and will strike back at Western countries.