The United States imposed new sanctions on allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, prompting Moscow to denounce "Cold War" tactics amid more violence in eastern Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Banning visas and freezing assets of the likes of Putin's friend Igor Sechin, head of oil giant Rosneft, also drew fire from President Barack Obama's domestic critics, who called it a "slap on the wrist", even as European allies wrangled over how to follow suit without badly hurting their own economies, the WSJ reported.
The new round of sanctions, following those imposed last month when Russia annexed Crimea, barely registered in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow rebels were holding a group of German and other OSCE military observers for a fourth day, according to the WSJ.
Despite a Ukrainian military operation to contain them, the militants extended their grip by seizing key public buildings in another town in Donetsk region, the WSJ reported. In the regional capital, Donetsk, club-wielding pro-Russian activists broke up a rally by supporters of the Western-backed government in Kiev.
And the high-profile mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city, was badly wounded by a gunman, raising fears of further unrest in a Russian-speaking region that has seen less trouble of late than the neighboring provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to the WSJ.
U.S. sanctions were aimed, Washington officials said, at "cronies" of Putin, the WSJ reported. Seven men, including Sechin, were targeted by visa bans and freezing of any U.S. assets, and 17 companies were also named. EU states added 15 names to its blacklist and will reveal them on Tuesday.
"The goal is not to go after Mr. Putin personally," Obama said, according to the WSJ. "The goal is to change his calculus with respect to how the current actions that he's engaging in Ukraine could have an adverse impact on the Russian economy over the long haul."
