The United States on Friday unveiled sanctions against six of Crimea’s breakaway leaders, including the official who signed the deal with Moscow to split the peninsula from Ukraine

The United States on Friday unveiled sanctions against six of Crimea's breakaway leaders, including the official who signed the deal with Moscow to split the peninsula from Ukraine.
  
The new Treasury sanctions also targeted the former vice speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Sergei Tsekov, who helped pave the way towards the March referendum in Crimea on separating from Ukraine, and a gas company whose assets were seized by the Crimean parliament and are now managed by Moscow.
  
"Crimea is occupied territory. We will continue to impose costs on those involved in ongoing violations of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.
  
Also targeted in the sanctions -- which freeze the US-based assets of all listed persons -- was Aleksei Chaliy, the de facto mayor of Sevastopol, who signed the deal on March 16 to unite Crimea with Russia. He was joined by Crimea's deputy prime minister Rustam Temirgaliev, and Yuriy Zherebtsov, said to be among the main organizers of the March 16 referendum held in the southern peninsula on whether to join Russia.
  
Electoral officials Mikhail Malyshev and Valery Medvedev were targeted for administering the vote, which has been denounced by the US and its European allies as "illegal." The former head of the Ukrainian security services, Pyotr Zima, who was dismissed after swearing an oath of loyalty to the new Crimean authorities, was also placed on the list.
  
The Crimea-based gas company Chernomorneftegaz was listed "because it is complicit in the misappropriation of state assets of Ukraine or of an economically significant entity in Ukraine," the Treasury said in a statement.