US blacklists Crimea’s representatives to Russian parliament

The United States added six Crimean representatives newly elected to Russia’s parliament to its sanctions blacklist Monday for their part in supporting Moscow’s illegal 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory.

The six — Dmitry Belik, Andrey Kozenko, Konstantin Bakharev, Svetlana Savchenko, Ruslan Balbek, and Pavel Shperov — were all elected in a vote on September 18 to represent the Black Sea peninsula and its naval port of Sevastopol.

The elections were “illegitimate,” the US Treasury said in a statement, adding that the sanctions announcement comes after the European Union took similar action against the six.

They were complicit in policies “that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine,” it said.

The move was part of “maintaining pressure on Russia until it respects the security and sovereignty of Ukraine,” said John Smith, acting director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

“Treasury will continue to sanction those individuals involved in Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its destabilizing activities in Ukraine,” he added.

The sanctions ban Americans and US entities from dealings with the six, which effectively tightly restricts their access to the international financial system. Any assets they have on US territory are also frozen.