Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was preparing countermeasures in the wake of a decision by the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on Russian individuals and entities over their ties to North Korea.
"Washington should have learned that for us the language of sanctions is unacceptable,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said in a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
Ryabkov said that the Kremlin is "beginning to work out an inevitable response" and blamed the United States for the deepening rift between the two countries triggered by new sanctions imposed by Trump on Russia in early August.
"We haven’t lost hope that the voice of reason will sooner or later triumph and that our American colleagues will realize the futility and harmful nature of the further unwinding of this sanctions spiral," the statement said.
The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed new sanctions on Russian companies for supporting North Korea, targeting four Russian individuals and one company.
The list includes the Moscow-based Gefest-M and its director Ruben Kirakosyan for doing business with a North Korean entity involved in producing missiles.
Also sanctioned were Russian citizens Mikhail Pisklin, Andrei Serbin and Irina Huish for activities in the North Korean energy industry.
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