MOSCOW, September 17. /ITAR-TASS/. The European Union and the United States should impose sanctions on each other for supporting the Kiev regime that has violated the recently reached ceasefire deal, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament said on Wednesday.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) came under artillery fire at the MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine on September 14. The attack came despite the ceasefire agreed at the September 5 meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk.

“Two days ago, Ukraine’s government forces opened fire on a column of OSCE monitors. So this is a violation of the ceasefire by the government troops,” State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said at the meeting with France's special representative to Russia, Jean-Pierre Chevenement.

“In this case, judging from the sanctions logic, the EU should announce sanctions against the US that supports the current Kiev regime, and the US should therefore declare a package of sanctions against the EU that backs Kiev,” Naryshkin said.

Naryshkin also agreed with Chevenement that the European Union could “play a more significant role in the de-escalation of the Ukrainian crisis.” “EU leaders should bear in mind that they rule independent and sovereign states and they should not be trail along the policy of our overseas partner.”

The Russian lawmaker said Brussels should make every effort to “support and preserve this fragile peace and this dialogue between two sides of the internal Ukrainian conflict” rather than introduce more sanctions against Russia.

Since March, the United States and the European Union have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow over its stance on the conflict in Ukraine. Moscow has responded by imposing an embargo on food imports from the countries that hit Russia with sanctions.