Putin and his entourage had hundreds of millions of dollars frozen in US accounts.61 Moscow, for its part, resorted to more classic retaliation. It did not cut off gas supplies. But it issued a blanket ban against agricultural imports from Europe while increasing its military support for the Donbass rebels, who mounted a bloody counteroffensive on August 23–24. With the front line frozen, Kiev was forced to accept a ceasefire brokered in Minsk by Germany and France on September 5. With the new cold war between Russia and the West having escalated into a comprehensive and violent confrontation,
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