Obama announces expanded sanctions against Russia as E.U. aligns --- LONDON — The European Union on Tuesday overcame months of misgivings to impose a wave of tough new economic sanctions on Russia, including an arms embargo and limits on access to European capital markets for Russian state-owned banks. -- President Obama immediately followed the European action by announcing a new round of U.S. measures that he said will affect “key sectors of the Russian economy.” Among other actions, he expanded the list of U.S.-sanctioned banks and defense companies. -- The United States and Europe banned exports of technology for use in Russian deepwater, Arctic and shale oil exploration. -- The U.S.-Europe combination, Obama said, will “have an even bigger bite” on Russia than a series of lesser measures intended to push the Russians back from their role in destabilizing Ukraine. --- “It didn’t have to come to this. It does not have to be this way,” he said in a brief statement on the South Lawn of the White House. “There continues to be a better choice — the choice of de-escalation.” Obama called on President Vladi­mir Putin to stop supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, to pull his troops back from the border, and to promote a negotiated settlement between the separatists and the Western-backed Ukraine government. - More, Washingtonpost