Further sanctions are set to be imposed on Russia in the coming days as the international community steps up pressure on Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine, The Guardian reported Saturday.
US secretary of state John Kerry, who held talks with foreign secretary Philip Hammond in London on Saturday, described Russia’s conduct as “simply unacceptable”.
“Russia has engaged in an absolutely brazen and cynical process over these last days,” he said. “We know to a certainty what Russia has been providing to the separatists, how Russia is involved with the separatists.
“We are talking about additional sanctions, about additional efforts, and I’m confident over the next days people will make it clear that we are not going to play this game,” he added.
“We’re not going to sit there and be part of this kind of extraordinarily craven behaviour at the expense of the sovereignty and integrity of a nation.”
Hammond condemned the way in which the ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk had been “systematically breached”.
“We are going to talk about how we can maintain European unity and US-European alignment in response to those breaches,” he said.