YALTA, September 15. /TASS/. The EU’s extension of sanctions against individuals and entities of the Russian Federation and southeast Ukraine does not come as something unexpected, the Russian tit-for-tat blacklist works, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday.

"We noticed that on September 14, the EU Council decided once again to extend economic sanctions against Russia and southeast Ukraine until March 2018," she said. "It wasn’t a surprise for us considering the biased approaches of the EU to the Ukrainian problem and unwillingness to provide a fair assessment of Kiev’s actions in undermining the Minsk Agreements," she added.

Zakharova also reiterated that in response to the EU’s unfriendly actions, a Russian blacklist was adopted. On September 14, the EU prolonged economic sanctions against Russian citizens and companies for another six months. The duration of these sanctions runs out on September 15. A political decision to prolong the blacklist was made on September 6 by ambassadors from 28 EU countries. Brussels started imposing sanctions against Russia in reaction to Moscow’s actions in Ukraine beginning in March 2014.