Russian Federation to ban Ukrainian food imports from January

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at a meeting with Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of G7 and the EU Member States on Thursday, 19 November, the governmental portal reports.

Since conceding that a Russian airliner was downed in the Sinai by a terrorist bomb, Moscow has unleashed a series of punishing air strikes against Raqqa, the Islamic State’s headquarters in Syria.

French President François Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed Putin’s resolve to fight ISIS after the attacks in Paris and last month’s downing of a Russian plane, which killed all 224 people onboard and an incident for which ISIS has also claimed responsibility.

Russian Federation provided the $3 billion to Kiev in late 2013, during the rule of Ukraine’s former, Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. “We are ready not to receive any money this year, $1 bln next year, another $1 bln in 2017 and 2018”, Putin said.

“We’ll have to protect our market on a unilateral basis from unattended access of goods through Ukraine’s customs territory, those being goods from third countries, first of all from the states of the European Union”, Ulyukayev added. If the worldwide Monetary Fund accepts Moscow’s version of the deal as a government-to-government transaction, Ukraine could lose IMF funding in a potentially devastating blow to its reeling economy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said sanctions will remain in place until a peace agreement is fully implemented.

“We agreed with our partners that we’ll discuss details of our proposals comprehensively in the nearest future”, Putin said on Monday.

A senior European Union official said there was no sign that the consensus behind extending the sanctions was starting to crack. The European Commission president apparently wrote the letter after last weekend’s summit of the Group of 20 wealthy nations in Turkey.

Vice President Joe Biden will make his fifth visit to Ukraine in December, and the USA recently announced a $1 billion loan guarantee pending certain reforms.

But diplomats have also voiced concerns over ongoing corruption in Ukraine, particularly in law-enforcement agencies that have failed to bring any high-profile corruption cases to court.