KIEV (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) to expand the list of Russian individuals and legal entities and to extend the duration of sanctions. The individual sanctions also included people who were accused of entering Ukrainian territory illegally.
Nationals of Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Spain have been also included in the list. Among them Giuseppe Raffa, the president of the Italian province of Reggio Calabria, Sotirios Zarianopoulos, an EU Parliament member from the Greek Communist Party, Bulgarian journalist Magdalena Tasheva, Polish bloggers David Berezicki and Dawid Hudziec and many others. All of them have been accused of entering Ukrainian territory illegally.
Ukraine does not recognize the 2014 referendum on Crimea's reunification with Russia. According to the country’s law, Ukraine may ban entry for any foreigners who had visited post-referendum Crimea without a permit from Kiev. Moscow considers the referendum to be in line with the UN Charter and perceives the issue of Crimea's territorial belonging as historically closed.