Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea recalls the Soviet occupation of Eastern European states during the Cold War and demands that the U.S. impose new sanctions, according to a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

“Russia’s occupation of Crimea is illegal,” New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Thursday. “We need to be crystal clear about that in our policy, just as we were during the Soviets’ decades-long occupation of the Baltic states.”