Russia will respond to the renewal of EU’s sanctions on the basis of the reciprocity principle, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"We have said it many times, that the reciprocity principle is the basis of our approach in the exchange of sanctions," he stressed.
"Russia believes these sanctions are unjustified and unlawful. But we have never initiated sanction measures before or now," Peskov said, noting that this practice "does not only prejudice the interests of the economic activities of participants in our country, but also the interests of these countries, that is, the interests of the taxpayers of the European states.
Earlier, the EU Council at the foreign ministers’ level extended the economic sanctions against Russia for six months. "The decision on extending the restrictive measures has been taken and comes together with an effort to implement in full the February 12 Minsk agreements on Ukraine," a spokeswoman for the council’s external affairs service, Susanne Kiefer said.
