Live Blog: UN Backs Ukraine Integrity

RFE/RL Ukrainian Service video of a flash protest in the northeast Ukrainian city of Sumy urging Ukrainians to avoid Russian goods so as not to "sponsor the occupation of Ukraine."

The International Federation of Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists "demand justice" over an assault by a nationalist Ukrainian lawmaker and fellow right-wingers on the head of Ukraine's state television station. Here's the text of that statement:

Here are some quotes from senior U.S. administration officials speaking by telephone today with reporters on the expanded U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals and Bank Rossiya, which one official described as more than "a mere wrist slap":

“We will continue to impose additional costs. These sanctions under the executive order that the president signed earlier in the week provide us the ability to continue building out our list in coordination with Europe of individuals and entities that we can sanction. So nobody should believe that this is the end of what we are prepared to do under the executive order the president signed earlier in the week. This is only the beginning.”

“We would pursue it with care given the fact that that could also impact the global economy. But there should be no mistake that Russia is far more vulnerable and would be severely isolated were we to move forward with these types of sanctions in response to further Russian escalation.”

“This is signaling that if there is further escalation, for instance military intervention in southern and eastern Ukraine, that we are prepared to target entities in these very significant sectors of the Russian economy.”

“The cronies who were designated today, I suspect that some of their brethren who have accounts at Bank Rossiya and otherwise run in those circles are now asking themselves whether they’re next.”

“We saw after the actions that we took on Monday some bluster from some of the individuals who we designated, claiming that these sanctions on them would have no impact. I would suggest that if any of these individuals, including the ones that we are doing today, have any interest in doing any business outside of Russia in rubles, they’re going to find great difficulty in doing so. They will be unable to access any U.S. financial services, will find it difficult to transact in the dollar and I suspect will find it very difficult to transact in Europe and elsewhere as our partners around the world have demonstrated over time a willingness to also adhere to the sanctions that we are imposing.”

“I think these individuals will find their ability to continue to act in the world economy in any fashion severely constrained.”

“We expect that this will have a significant impact on its ability to operate. It will be frozen out of the dollar. All the correspondent accounts that it has with U.S. financial institutions will be terminated. And we will work with our partners both in the government and in the private sector around the world to isolate Bank Rossiya and prevent it from operating to the greatest extent possible.”

One official said the sanctions could target “the financial services sector, the energy sector, metals and mining, defense and related materiel and the engineering sector.”

“Once those sectors are designated...we will then be able to impose sanctions on specific entities within those sectors. This is a flexible tool that we can use in response to further provocations” – for example a Russian incursion into further areas of Ukraine – “or other provocations as we deem appropriate.”

“We are now looking and thinking about ways we could actually operationalize this executive order should we decide to do it in response to continued or escalated Russian aggression. So we are looking at specific things we could do. I don’t have to get into that now, but this is an active and ongoing process.”

“There may have been some in Russia who mistakenly believed that we would stop with the sanctions authorities announced on Monday. Not true, as today’s announcement indicates. Nor are we stopping now. As my colleagues have indicated, these sanctions authorities we now have are very broad. We are working actively to prepare additional sanctions under these authorities using their creative breadth to design sanctions that will hurt the entities with … the smallest possible impact on us and our allies.”

“People may think that they are a mere wrist slap. I can assure them that they are not.”

Oil trader Gennady Timchenko's Gunvor was quick to issue this statement via Twitter after Timchenko was included on the U.S. sanctions list:

Crimea's secessionist government has posted a photo on its Facebook page of prime minister, Sergei Aksyonov, with his new Russian passport.

Highlights of Obama's announcement of the expanded Russia sanctions:

From Miriam Elder of "Buzzfeed's" reaction to the expanded U.S. sanctions list: