Sergei Malgavko/TASS

The European Union has imposed sanctions against eight Russians over the conflict in the Kerch Strait, the EU's official journal reports . The restrictive measures include, in particular, the head of the FSB Border Department for Crimea, Sergei Stankevich, his deputy Andrei Shein, as well as the commander of the Southern Military District (SMD), Aleksandr Dvornikov.

Also subject to sanctions were Ruslan Romashkin and Aleksey Shatokhin, who hold the posts of heads of services of the FSB command posts in Crimea in Balaklava and Kerch, the commanders of two patrol ships – Don and Izumrud – Aleksey Salyayev and Andrey Shipitsyn, and the commander of the small anti-submarine ship Suzdalets, Sergey Shcherbakov.

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The sanctions include a ban on entry and blocking of assets in the European Union. These same people were put on the wanted list in Ukraine in December 2018 on suspicion of seizing Ukrainian sailors and ships.

In February, Bloomberg reported that European diplomats had agreed at the level of technical specialists on sanctions against eight Russians. Before that, the Financial Times wrote that the EU and the US were close to agreeing on new restrictive measures due to the conflict in the Kerch Strait.

The US authorities allowed sanctions to be imposed because of the incident, but they have not been imposed yet. In late February, a bill "on protecting US security from Kremlin aggression" was posted on the US Congress website, which suggests, in particular, that within 90 days after the law comes into force, the US president must impose sanctions against at least 24 FSB officers. They will be in effect until Russia releases the Ukrainian sailors captured in the Kerch Strait, the document says.

In November 2018, Russian border guards detained two Ukrainian artillery boats and a barge in the Kerch Strait that had crossed the Russian border; their crews, 24 people, were arrested. According to Moscow, the ships crossed the border illegally. Kyiv claims that the ships requested permission to pass under the bridge in the prescribed manner, but received no response from Russian border guards.

EU imposes sanctions on eight Russians over Kerch Strait conflict