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Ignoring the toughest sanctions against Moscow since the end of the Cold War, Russian President
Vladimir Putin recognized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula as an "independent and sovereign
country" on Monday, a bold challenge to Washington that escalates one of Europe's worst security
crises in years. The brief decree posted on the Kremlin's website
came just hours after the United States and the European Union announced asset freezes
and other sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials involved in the Crimean crisis.
President Barack Obama warned that more would come if Russia didn't stop interfering in
Ukraine, and Putin's move clearly forces his hand.
The West has struggled to find leverage to force Moscow to back off in the Ukraine turmoil,
of which Crimea is only a part, and analysts saw Monday's sanctions as mostly ineffectual.
Moscow showed no signs of flinching in the dispute that has roiled Ukraine since Russian
troops took effective control of the strategic Black Sea peninsula last month and supported
the Sunday referendum that overwhelmingly called for annexation by Russia. Recognizing
Crimea as independent would be an interim step in absorbing the region.
Crimea had been part of Russia since the 18th century, until Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
transferred it to Ukraine in 1954 and both Russians and Crimea's majority ethnic Russian
population see annexation as correcting a historic insult.
Ukraine's turmoil — which began in November with a wave of protests against President
Viktor Yanukovych and accelerated after he fled to Russia in late February — has become
Europe's most severe security crisis in years. Russia, like Yanukovych himself, characterizes
his ouster as a coup, and alleges the new authorities are fascist-minded and likely
to crack down on Ukraine's ethnic Russian population. Pro-Russia demonstrations have
broken out in several cities in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border, where the Kremlin
has been massing troops. Fearing that Russia is prepared to risk violence
to make a land-grab, the West has consistently spoken out against Russia's actions but has
run into a wall of resistance from Moscow. Reacting to Monday's sanctions, Russian Deputy
Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declared that they were "a reflection of a pathological
unwillingness to acknowledge reality and a desire to impose on everyone one-sided and
unbalanced approaches that absolutely ignore reality."
"I think the decree of the president of the United States was written by some joker,"
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, one of the individuals hit by the sanctions,
said on his Twitter account. The White House imposed asset freezes on seven
Russian officials, including Putin's close ally Valentina Matvienko, who is speaker of
the upper house of parliament, and Vladislav Surkov, one of Putin's top ideological aides.
The Treasury Department also targeted Yanukovych, Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov and two other
top figures. The EU's foreign ministers slapped travel
bans and asset freezes against 21 officials from Russia and Ukraine.