WASHINGTON, September 9 (RIA Novosti) - The United States “has tools at the ready” to expand economic sanctions against Russia over its alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis, the US State Department said Tuesday.
"The United States is finalizing measures to both deepen and broaden our sanctions across Russia's financial, energy and defense sectors," spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters.
"We are finalizing these packages, but we are going to make decisions based on what's happening on the ground in the next few days," Harf said.
However, Marie Harf has acknowledged that the ceasefire between Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics is “mostly holding.”
The European Union on Monday officially adopted a new round of sanctions against Russia but delayed their implementation pending the assessment of the ceasefire regime agreed last week by Kiev authorities and independence supporters in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
On Tuesday, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird threatened imposing more sanctions against Russia in case the ceasefire in the east of Ukraine is not continued
A number of western countries have already imposed several rounds of economic sanctions over Moscow’s alleged participation in the Ukrainian conflict. The Russian side reacted by introducing a year-long ban on certain food imports from the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia and Norway.
