Lawmakers call for tighter sanctions on Russia

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called Sunday for beefing up western sanctions against Russia to include its petrochemical and banking industries and warned that Moscow thus far has ignored United States and European efforts to persuade it to back off its confrontation with Ukraine.

“We’ve helped in many ways to create the problems that exist there. And to leave them alone in the manner that we’re leaving them alone to me is just unconscionable,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee’s senior Republican member, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”