Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he is not considering placing sanctions against Russia while his government focuses on retrieving Australian victims from the wreckage of the Malaysian airliner disaster in Ukraine, according to The Associated Press.
Abbott has had several telephone conversations with Vladimir Putin in the past two weeks and has credited the Russian president with cooperating with international efforts to retrieve the remains of 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile likely fired by pro-Russian rebels who then controlled the crash site, the AP reported.
Abbott said he was not considering following the United States and European Union by increasing sanctions aimed at pressuring Putin into ending his country's support for separatists in east Ukraine, according to the AP.
"We already have some sanctions on Russia. I'm not saying that we might not at some point in the future move further. But at the moment, our focus is not on sanctions; our focus is on bringing home our dead as quickly as we humanly can," Abbott told reporters, the AP reported.
Australia lost 28 citizens in the July 17 disaster and sponsored a United Nations Security Council Resolution which passed, with Russian support, according to the AP.
The resolution demands the separatists allow the dead to be retrieved and international investigators free access to the crash site, but a resurgence in fighting between the separatists and Ukraine troops in recent days has prevented Dutch and Australian police from searching the site for human remains and evidence, the AP reported.
Spurred to action by the downing of the airliner, the European Union approved dramatically tougher economic sanctions Tuesday against Russia, including an arms embargo and restrictions on state-owned banks, according to the AP.
President Barack Obama followed with an expansion of U.S. penalties targeting key sectors of the Russian economy, the AP reported. Obama and U.S. allies also warned that Russia was building up troops and weaponry along its border with Ukraine.
Australia introduced financial sanctions and travel bans on June 19 targeting 50 people and 11 entities complicit in the Russian threat to Ukraine sovereignty, according to the AP.
