Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia could close its airspace to Western carriers if new European sanctions target Russia’s oil and gas companies or impose additional financing restrictions.
Medvedev was speaking business daily Vedomosti in an interview published Monday where Medvedev warned that Russia would respond if there were further restrictions on Russia’s financial sector.
An expansion to European Union sanctions, expected to be implemented Tuesday, would ban three of Russia’s main oil companies , Gazprom Neft, Transneft and Rosneft , from raising money on European capital markets for longer than 30 days, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing documents detailing the measures.
The expansion to EU sanctions introduced in July would also limit the time of fund-raising to 30 days, down from the previous 90 days, for five state-run banks, including Sberbank and VTB, the report said.
Medvedev said he had already proposed at a government meeting that Russia could respond to any new sanctions with an air-traffic restriction, according to the text of his interview published on the Cabinet website.