BRUSSELS, December 17. /TASS/. The European Union’s decision to constantly toughen its illegitimate anti-Russian sanctions, which undermine basic international norms, will only increase the number of countries ready to hear out Russia’s stance, Russian Permanent Mission to the European Union said.
"The EU sanctions mechanism keeps running. Unilateral restrictive measures against third states and their citizens have long become the foreign policy instrument of choice for Brussels. It is clear to everyone that the European Union’s goal is to put pressure on sovereign countries, and its tactics is illegitimate," the mission said, commenting on the Union’s ninth package of anti-Russian sanctions.
"Restrictive measures run counter to the international system of financial and commercial relations and contradict basic principles of the World Trade Organization. Not that long ago, Brussels maintained that the use of exterritorial sanctions is illegal. Today, it is actively using them. Moreover, the European Union has invented a mechanism of punishing its own citizens and citizens of third states for the so-called bypassing of anti-Russian sanctions, and put forward a draft bill that makes violation of illegitimate EU sanctions a crime," Russian diplomats continued.
"No wonder more and more countries are ready to hear out reasons. They are not ready to accept illegitimate rules of the game and to obey instructions that are being imposed on them from the outside," the Russian diplomatic mission’s statement says.
The statement also says that the ninth package of sanctions "will directly affect ordinary Europeans."
"By banning more Russian media outlets, the European Union deprives its own citizens of an opportunity to learn an alternative point of view, violates their right for access to information, and clearly infringes upon basic values, such as the freedom of speech and the rights of journalists," it says. "It is hard to believe that the European Union does not realize it."
On Friday, the Official Journal of the European Union published a 692-page resolution imposing another package of sanctions on Russia for the violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The European Union blacklisted 141 individuals and 49 companies.