Russia says UN sanctions against six Southern Sudanese counterproductive

UNITED NATIONS, July 2. /TASS/. Russia believes that the sanctions the UN Security Council introduced on Wednesday against six Southern Sudanese military commanders are counterproductive but it did not object to them upon heeding the position taken by African countries, Alexei Zaitsev, the press secretary of the Russian mission to the UN told reporters. U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said earlier the UN Security Council had decided to blacklist three representatives of the Southern Sudanese Army and three rebel field commanders who had played a role in fanning an armed conflict in the country. The restrictive measures against them presuppose travel bans and the freezing of financial assets. The blacklist includes Peter Yak Gadet, the leader of the South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA) who publicly vowed in 2014 to start bringing down UN Aviation aircraft over the young African country on the pretext it was allegedly supporting the government forces. Soon after that, in August 2014, a Russian helicopter Mi-8 AMT was gunned down near the town of Bentiu. Three of the helicopter’s four crewmembers died. The UN Security Council formally introduced sanctions against South Sudan in March 2015 but no names were entered in the blacklist until July 1. "Russia didn’t object to the proposal upon taking account of the Africans’ position although we believe this decision is counterproductive and unconducive to a peace process, all the more so that the individuals targeted by these sanctions didn’t take part in decision-making," Zaitsev said. The current conflict in South Sudan broke out at the end of 2013 after the country’s President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, accused the allies of the dismissed Vice President Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon of organizing a coup d’etat attempt. The civil war that has been flaring since then has carried away thousands of human lives and has further deteriorated the meager living standards of the population. The mostly animalistic and Christian South Sudan waged struggle for independence from Sudan for about fifty years and it became a sovereign state in July 2011. Read more