Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has criticised the new U.S. sanctions against Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s daughters.
“This is something that is difficult to understand and explain,” he said on Thursday, according to Russia’s Interfax agency.
He said there would be a corresponding response from Moscow.
The U.S. had on Wednesday announced new punitive measures in response to Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, with Washington alleging that Russian troops had committed war crimes against innocent civilians.
The sanctions list now includes the Kremlin leader’s two adult daughters.
The sanctions on them froze any assets connected to the U.S. financial system and prohibited U.S. individuals from doing business with them.
Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov’s family and members of Russia’s powerful Security Council, including former president and prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and current Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, were also targeted.
Peskov further stated that a new bill recently passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Joe Biden to supply more weapons to Ukraine will have a “negative effect.”
“Pumping Ukraine full of weapons in various formats does not help bring Russian-Ukrainian negotiations to success,” he said.
Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow on ending the war began on Feb. 28, four days after the Russian invasion began.
Moscow called for Ukraine’s “denazification and demilitarisation” and its renunciation of NATO membership as conditions for an end to hostilities.
In addition, Kiev was to recognise the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, annexed in 2014 as Russian territory and the separatist regimes of Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent.
