“You can see that de facto everybody [included on the list] is called an enemy of the US,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, stated on Tuesday.
He added that the text and the headline of the document are written in accordance with the US Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, signed into law by US President Donald Trump in 2017.
The spokesman said that the list has created an “unprecedented situation” and will be further analyzed in Moscow.
Earlier, top Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said that the move amounts to almost a complete breakdown of ties between Moscow and Washington.
“Formally our countries have relations, but including in the sanctions list almost all our country’s leadership means that those relations automatically break down,” Dzhabarov, who is First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs noted.
He also called it “gross interference” in Russia’s internal affairs.
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Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said earlier on Tuesday that the US Treasury’s ‘Kremlin List’ resembles a Who’s Who of Russian politics.
Dvorkovich said he was not surprised to find his name on the list.
“As a member of the government, I was obliged to be on this list, the entire government is there, so there is nothing surprising. It is a list of individuals who are obviously the leading ones in Russian politics and business. This is not a sanctions list; it’s a list which is used for further decisions and assessments. We will continue to monitor the situation. There are no grounds for any action yet,” he told journalists in Novosibirsk.