EU adds new names to visa bans

The EU decided to take only incremental new measures to punish Russia for this week's annexation of Crimea, adding 12 names to the 21 Russian and Crimean officials subject to EU visa bans and asset freezes but putting off indefinitely any further sanctions.

In addition to the new names, which EU officials said included a Russian journalist, leaders also cancelled a planned EU-Russia summit and agreed to sign new integration treaties with Moldova and Georgia within three months. But at a summit in Brussels on Thursday night, they failed to impose broader economic and trade sanctions, only tasking the European Commission to prepare such measures if Russia further destabilises Ukraine.

"The European Council recalls that any further steps by the Russian Federation to destabilise the situation in Ukraine would lead to additional and far reaching consequences for relations in a broad range of economic areas," the leaders agreed in a summit communique.

EU officials said the most senior Russian official on their list, to be published later Friday, was deputy prime minister Dimitry Rogozin. Mr Rogozin was put on a similar US sanctions list earlier this month. Two senior Russian military commanders are also on the EU list, bringing the total number of Russian military officers included in the list to five. But unlike the US, which reached deeper into the Kremlin in its sanction list on Thursday, nobody more senior than Mr Rogozin was included.

Despite resistance by several EU diplomats, the list includes a high-profile Russian journalist, believed to be Dmitry Kiselev, a presenter with the Rossiya Segodnya media group regarded as the chief propagandist of Vladimir Putin, Russian president. Earlier this week Mr Kiselev said on Russian television that Russia was "the world's only country that is ready to turn the USA into radioactive ash".

Asked why the EU stopped short of the US measures, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declined to discuss names, but said the EU targets had to be involved in the Crimean annexation, a limitation that did not apply to the American list.

"We in the EU are bound by the requirement they have something to do with Crimea," said Ms Merkel. "We have a different legal situation to the US."

Despite the limited action, EU officials insisted their sanctions were already having an impact, with Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president, pointing to growing market jitters over Russia.

"We are seeing that the shadow of sanctions is already having an effect on Russia's investment climate," Mr Van Rompuy said.

He added that the EU would not show Russia its hand by setting a specific trigger point - such as a deeper Russian incursion into Ukraine - for broader sanctions. "We will assess every incident," Mr Van Rompuy said. "It is up to us when we trigger this."

Ms Merkel said the decision to task the European Commission with preparing broader sanctions would enable EU leaders to pull the trigger quickly "when such measures make sense". But she declined to be drawn on what could trigger such measures, and EU officials said leaders were intentionally vague.

Diplomats said there was a growing consensus that only a Russian move into other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine would lead to such broad economic and trade sanctions.

EU leaders said they hoped that the OSCE would be able to send a team of observers to Ukraine to help defuse the crisis. But if this were impossible, the EU itself was preparing to send monitors, though not to Crimea.

"I think it would be unlikely if Russia would allow us to send a mission to Crimea," said Ms Merkel.

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