Russia cancels talks with US over new sanctions

Russia has cancelled its planned talks with the United States after Washington imposed a new series of sanctions over Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine.

A planned round of talks aimed at resolving issues between the two countries was supposed to take place in St. Petersburg.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and U.S. Under Secretary of State Tom Shannon were expected to attend the talks.

"As we know, in the next few days there were plans to continue the bilateral consultations on the 'irritants' that we have accumulated in our Russian-American relations, plans to find ways out of the extremely difficult situation in which the American side wore the partnership and cooperation with Russia down," CNN quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying in a statement.

The ministry said that the situation does not allow for a round of talks between the two sides after yesterday's decision on sanctions and pointed that there is no content for the talks as the U.S has not offered anything.

Ryabkov called the new U.S. sanctions as absurd and said that Moscow will not leave such steps without a response.

Tass news agency quoted Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Wednesday that the country was currently considering possible retaliatory measures against the U.S. move.

The US tightened sanctions on Moscow as two Russian government officials were among 38 people and entities that were added to a list of sanctions targets by the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department said the new sanctions would not be lifted until Russia leaves Crimea.