US sanctions against Moscow are threatening rebounding Russian-Italian cooperation, according to the board chairman of Banca Intesa Russia.

New sanctions against Russia imposed by the United States are very limited in scope and were a token gesture for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko who was on an official visit to Washington at that time, the leader of the Belgian right-wing People’s Party, Mischael Modrikamen, told Sputnik on Wednesday.

Anti-Russian sanctions are useless and part of efforts by the United States and the European Union to convince their populations of the need for bigger military spending and NATO's eastward expansion, Gianmatteo Ferrari, a member of the Italian Lega Nord party, told Sputnik on Wednesday.

Russia will not continue bilateral consultations with the United States on problems in relations after the expansion of US anti-Russian sanctions, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a comment posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website Wednesday.

Moscow is preparing possible measures in response to the United States' extended sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

The newly imposed US sanctions against Russia are designed to complicate bilateral ties between Moscow and Washington, Thierry Mariani, a member from the French center-right The Republicans party and co-president of the Franco-Russian Dialogue Association, told Sputnik on Tuesday.

Moscow is already working on response measures after Washington has expanded sanctions against Russian citizens.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern on Tuesday criticized the recent decision of the US Senate to impose new sanctions on Russia, which would target, among others, companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

The US Senate's initiative to limit the president's capacity to cancel anti-Russian sanctions is a kind of backup plan in the event President Donald Trump decides to unilaterally lift the restrictive measures, chairman of the Russian State Duma International Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky said.

Moscow will not leave unanswered the possible expansion of US sanctions against Russia, a senior Russian lawmaker told Sputnik on Wednesday.

US Senators on Wednesday voted to approve a measure that would expand sanctions on Russia and limit the president’s ability to lift restrictions. The measures take aim at Russia's defense, intelligence, banking, mining, and transportation industrial sectors.

Discussions of the new sanctions against Russia in the US Congress seek to limit President Donald Trump in his cautious intention to establish a dialogue with Moscow, the chair of Russia's Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, told Sputnik on Tuesday.

The Austrian Parliament rejected the proposal of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) of immediate lifting of the anti-Russian economic sanctions, FPOe Member Axel Kassegger told Sputnik on Thursday.

Two US senators, Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho and Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, have introduced a bill calling for imposing tougher sanctions on Russia. Political analyst Alexander Gusev told Radio Sputnik that such initiatives are based on nothing more than rumors and wild guesses.

The United States has used an approach that has outlived itself by slapping restrictive measures on a Russian citizen and three Russian companies over their alleged ties to the North Korean missile and nuclear efforts, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik.

The possible tightening of the US sanctions against Russian enterprises is unlikely to have an impact on the Russian economy as it does not impact the banking sector, the deputy chair of the Federation Council's Committee on Economic Policy, Sergey Kalashnikov, told Sputnik on Thursday.

US Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduces new sanctions against Russia at a Senate Committee meeting on Thursday, Shaheen's spokesman Ryan Nickel said on Wednesday.

A bipartisan US Senate bill to impose sanctions on Russia has been put on hold until further investigation, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said.

The sanction war has painfully backfired on the Western countries, UN Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy said.

Maintaining the sanctions imposed by Western states will not negatively affect Russia’s economy, which has adapted to these restrictive measures, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures Idriss Jazairy said Thursday.