Ukraine spy chief: sanctions hurting Putin's war chest

EU and US economic sanctions on Russia had a much bigger impact than previously thought, Ukraine's spy chief has said.

"One of the estimates which we managed to learn, Russian internal estimates, is that Western sanctions ... forced the Russian budget to lose $173bn [€151bn] already, which is quite a lot," Yehor Bozhok, the head of Ukraine's foreign intelligence service, the SZRU, told EUobserver in an interview in Kiev in January.

"This is their [Russia's] internal assessment, w...