(VOVworld) – Russian Foreign Ministry  announced on Saturday that it was expanding its list of Americans barred from the country, including a congressman and several senior military officers.

Russian Foreign Ministry building (Photo: RIA)

Alexander Lukashevich, spokesman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement that Moscow banned entry to Representative James P. Moran, a Democrat of Virginia in response to American sanctions against members of the Russian Parliament on July 2^nd. The list also includes Navy Rear Adm. Richard Butler, commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo and Lynndie England, a veteran accused of their abuses over prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This was also a tit-for-tat for American sanctions in May on 12 Russian nationals accused by the US of human right violation related to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail in 2009.