Ukraine brings in to force large-scale sanctions against Russian individuals

The decree contains a list compiled by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council of 388 individuals and 105 legal entities deemed to pose a “real or potential threat to Ukraine’s national interests, national security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”.

Two British journalists working for the BBC-Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells- and BBC cameraman Anton Chicherov had been banned from entering Ukraine but Judith Gough, the British ambassador to Ukraine, confirmed on Twitter that the BBC journalists would be released.

“We are dismayed by President Poroshenko’s actions, including a ban on dozens of worldwide media covering Ukraine”, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said.

“Even with concerns as to whether this deal is good or bad, if it turns ugly, Ukraine can always come back to the table further down the line to renegotiate terms”, he said in a note.

But after Kyiv postponed the polls due to security and monitoring concerns, pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk said the would hold their own ballot on October 18, a week before the rest of the country.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on Wednesday 16 September banning 41 global journalists and bloggers from Ukraine for one year.

But Kiev is especially angry at Moscow for shooting down United Nations attempts to condemn what Kiev views as Russia’s “aggression” that led to almost 8,000 deaths in Ukraine’s separatist industrial east.

“As [the] Ukrainian government continues to review the list we encourage it to keep in mind the importance of unfettered and factual journalism in a democratic society,” Spokesperson John Kirby said in a daily briefing.

“But introducing… Restrictions that curb free movement of journalists is not the way to ensure security”.

Ukraine’s sanctions decision could have a “corrosive effect” on important foreign partnerships, said Andreas Umland, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kiev.

On Thursday, Russian Federation said the inclusion of journalists on the sanctions list was “totally unacceptable”.

BBC foreign editor Andrew Roy said the ban was “a shameful attack on media freedom”.

Ukraine’s original list of punitive measures against Russian Federation agreed previous year was never officially published. “It absolutely does not comply with any principles of the freedom of speech”, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.