Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has said the United States will maintain sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine until the terms of the Minsk peace plan are fully implemented.
Nuland was speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 8, as the cease-fire agreed in Minsk in February has been widely upheld in the past month.
The conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists has killed more than 7,900 people since April 2014.
Nuland also said that sanctions imposed on Russia after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 would remain in place until the Kremlin agrees to withdraw Russian forces.
"We will judge Russia and the separatists by their actions, not their words," she said.