MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. The European Union’s anti-Russian sanctions will only increase a boomerang effect on their own citizens and economies of European countries, Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian lawmaker and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LPR), said on Friday.

"Brussels’ restrictions are becoming more and more farcical. European bureaucrats have become hostages to their Russophobic policy and now are simply running in circles. The only thing they can achieve is an increased boomerang effect on their own citizens and the economy of European countries," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

He recalled that the European Union’s seventh package of sanctions covers Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova, Moscow’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin and "such deadly enemies of the West as Rossotrudnichestvo (Federal Agency for the Affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation - TASS), the Russian World Foundation, the Gorchakov Fund for Public Diplomacy Support, actors Sergey Bezrukov and Vladimir Mashkov."

According to Slutsky, these sanctions are not meant to stop combat operations in Ukraine. "Brussels understands it quite well, but continues to feed the anti-Russian machine," he added.

On Thursday, the European Union announced the seventh package of anti-Russian sanctions covering Sberbank, the Russian World Foundation, the Gorchakov Fund for Public Diplomacy Support, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, Moscow’s Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, actors Sergey Bezrukov and Vladimir Mashkov, several law enforcers, lawmakers and Crimean officials.