Putin recognises  Crimea despite sanctions

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has brushed off US and European sanctions by approving a decree recognising Crimea as an independent and sovereign state.
The decree is a technical but highly symbolic move that enables Moscow to accept Crimea without Ukraine's consent.

His signature on the decree came just hours after the United States and the European Union had hit high-level Russian and Ukrainian officials linked to the Crimean crisis with travel bans and asset freezes. Western officials had also threatened further measures unless Moscow altered its course.
The US and EU sanctions lists were published a day after an internationally criticised referendum in Crimea, in which almost 97 per cent of participants supported leaving Ukraine to join to Russia.
Washington targeted seven Russian officials - including one aide and one adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin - and members of Russia's State Duma.
The US Treasury Department also announced sanctions on four Ukrainians, including ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and Sergei Aksyonov, Crimea's Moscow-backed prime minister.
"We'll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world," said US President Barack Obama in Washington.
The measures are "by far the most comprehensive sanctions applied to Russia since the end of the Cold War", a senior US administration official noted.
However, initial reactions from Moscow made light of the West's latest moves.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said his inclusion in the sanctions lists gave him "real global recognition". Parliamentarian and constitutional law expert Andrei Klishas added: "I fully like the company in which I found myself," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Asked why Putin himself had not been targeted by US sanctions, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that no individual had yet been ruled out, noting that there will be additional "costs" imposed on Russia if it does not change direction.
The US sanctions had earlier been described as "timid" by Republican Senator John McCain.
In Brussels EU foreign ministers imposed travel bans and asset freezes on 21 individuals - 13 Russians and eight Ukrainians.
Aksyonov topped the EU list, which includes Crimean parliament speaker Vladimir Konstantinov, first deputy premier Rustam Temirgaliev, and the self-declared "people's mayor" of Sevastopol, Oleksiy Chaliy.
On the Russian side, the list comprises 10 members of parliament and three military figures - Anatoliy Sidorov and Aleksandr Galkin, who command Russia's western and southern military districts, and Black Sea fleet commander Alexander Vitko.
The EU ministers warned in a statement of "additional and far-reaching consequences for relations in a broad range of economic areas", should Moscow further destabilise the situation in Ukraine.
Tensions between Moscow and the West have reached fever pitch, after thousands of suspected Russian troops began controlling access to Crimea's airports and blocking local Ukrainian military bases in late February.
The crisis began when Yanukovych refused to forge closer ties with the EU in order to favour relations with Russia instead.
Since then, Moscow has argued that the Crimean population, 60 per cent of which is made up of ethnic Russians, has a right to self-determination. The West has rejected Sunday's referendum as illegal.
In Kiev, Ukrainian lawmakers backed a decree by interim President Oleksandr Turchynov to partially mobilise the country's armed forces, with 40,000 reservists expected to be called up.
Crimean lawmakers also voted Monday to introduce Moscow time - currently two hours ahead of Ukraine's - by the end of the month.
Local officials said the Russian rouble would soon replace the Ukrainian hryvna as currency.

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