Putin Strikes Back at Cold War Foes as Ukraine War Rages

President Vladimir Putin struck back at U.S. and European Union sanctions with a ban on a range of food as Ukrainian troops pressed the attack on pro-Russian rebels in a bid to drive them out of their last strongholds.

As officials across Europe weighed the impact of the one-year food curbs, fighting raged around Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking easternmost regions, where separatists downed a fighter jet and military helicopter, according to the government in Kiev. North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in the Ukrainian capital for talks with President Petro Poroshenko, warned Putin to “step back from the brink.”