Kiev, Its Overseas Curators Derailing Ukrainian Peace Process - Official

The Ukrainian leadership and their foreign supervisors are continuing to put sand in the wheels of the reconciliation process, Russia's deputy foreign minister said.

PARIS (Sputnik) – Kiev and its overseas curators are continuing to “put a stick in the spokes” of the peace process in Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said Thursday.

“Kiev and its overseas curators continue to put a stick in the spokes of the Minsk process. It needs to be clearly understood that only the full resuscitation of the agreements reached in February and the explicit observation of the sequence of steps can give the chance of stopping the confrontation in this country from further tumbling downhill,” Meshkov said at the opening of Russia Week in Paris.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the enactment of year-long sanctions late Wednesday targeting over 400 individuals and 90 entities related to Russia. An expanded version of the list was approved by Ukraine's Security and Defense Council on September 2.

The new blacklist includes Greek, Italian, Israeli and Spanish political figures and journalists, as well as a BBC Moscow correspondent and producer, in addition to Russian reporters and officials.

Both BBC and the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Poroshenko to remove the "personal, special, economic" and other restrictive measures as they pose a threat to media freedom.