The European Union imposed sanctions on Friday on 12 people it blames for the seizure of the Ukrainian region of Crimea by Russia, including Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and two aides to President Vladimir Putin.
The people listed will have their assets in the European Union frozen and will be banned from traveling to the EU.
The two men close to Putin included on the list, which extends a previous one drawn up earlier this month, are Vladislav Surkov and Sergey Glazyev.
This comes as the European Union and Ukraine's interim government signed a political association agreement, committing to the same deal former president Viktor Yanukovich rejected last November, a move that lead to his overthrow.
The EU's 28 leaders and interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk signed the core chapters of the Association Agreement on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels, officials who witnessed the ceremony told Reuters.
The deal commits Ukraine and the EU to closer political and economic cooperation, although major parts of the agreement concerning free trade will only be signed after Ukraine has held new presidential elections in May.
Meanwhile, Russia's upper house of parliament unanimously approved a treaty on annexing Ukraine's Crimea region on Friday, clearing the way for President Vladimir Putin to sign it into law.
The Federation Council followed the State Duma lower house by voting for the treaty. Putin was expected to complete the ratification process by signing the treaty at a ceremony with the speakers of both chambers later on Friday.
Russian stances over US sanctions
President Vladimir Putin discussed international sanctions imposed on Russia over the Crimea crisis with senior security officials, Interfax news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
"The issue of sanctions was addressed" at a meeting of Putin's presidential Security Council, Peskov was quoted as saying. He said the council also discussed the situation in Ukraine and cooperation with international organizations.
Putin said Russia should for the time being refrain from imposing sanctions on Americans in retaliation for punitive measures announced by the United States, Russian news agencies reported.
For his part, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said international sanctions imposed on Russian officials and businessmen over the Crimea crisis were "absolutely unlawful" and would create artificial barriers with the West.
Lavrov made the remarks in a speech to the upper house of parliament in which he urged the chamber to approve a treaty signed by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to make Ukraine's Crimea region part of Russia.
Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said that Russia is considering a "mirror response" to sanctions imposed by the West over the Crimea crisis, Russia's state-run RIA news agency quoted him as saying.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region could raise the country's borrowing costs and push yields on Russian bonds higher.
Siluanov also said that should unfavorable market conditions persist, Russia may cancel its foreign borrowing plans for 2014 and reduce the issuance of domestic debt.
Russia's official plans envisage around $7 billion worth of foreign borrowing this year.
Earlier, he said he expected no big immediate impact from sanctions announced by the West on Russia's financial sector over the Crimea crisis.
In this regard, Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc have stopped, without notification, providing services for payment transactions for clients at Russia's SMP bank, whose main shareholders were hit by US sanctions, the bank said on Friday.
Washington imposed additional sanctions on Thursday against 20 Russians for involvement in the Ukraine crisis, including Boris Rotenberg and his older brother Arkady, who received large contracts for the Sochi Winter Olympics. They are co-owners of SMP Bank.
"Due to the fact that the sanctions were imposed on shareholders and not on the bank, we consider the moves by the payment systems unlawful and we are confident that we can resolve the encountered difficulties in the near future," the bank said in a statement.
The bank added it has no assets in the United States.
International positions:
The OSCE will hold an extraordinary meeting on Friday evening and diplomats said the rights and security body may finally reach a unanimous agreement to send a monitoring mission to Ukraine.
"It seems so," one Western diplomat said when asked if an agreement had been reached on the observer mission. The meeting was scheduled to start at 1830 GMT in Vienna, officials said.
This as France is suspending military cooperation with Russia, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said during a trip to Baltic states designed to reassure them as tensions mount with Russia over its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.
He said the suspension would concern joint military exercises but said nothing about the fate of contracts to supply Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia. On Thursday Le Drian had said such a decision would not be taken until October.
For his part, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Ukraine and Russia to meet for talks to prevent the crisis between them becoming "uncontrollable" and spreading beyond the region.
"What is important at this time is for Ukraine and Russian authorities to sit down together and engage in direct and constructive dialogue," Ban said in the Ukrainian capital Kiev after meeting acting President Oleksander Turchinov.
Ban said the longer peaceful dialogue was delayed, "the greater risk there will be of uncontrollable situations beyond these two countries and beyond the region." Turchinov said Ukraine would never accept Russia's annexation of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that is at the heart of the crisis.
REUTERS