Obama, senior EU officials barred from Chechnya

By Associated Press

Jul 26, 2014 11:19 AM CDT

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to the media, while meeting with El Salvador's President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina, and Honduran President Juan Hernandez, to discuss Central American immigration and the border crisis in the Cabinet Room of the White House Friday,... (Associated Press)

MOSCOW (AP) — Although Russia has not responded to U.S. sanctions by putting a travel ban on President Barack Obama, there's one part of the country he's blocked from: Chechnya.

The president of the small Russian republic that was the scene of two devastating separatist wars in the past 20 years on Saturday said he was placing Obama on a list of people banned from visiting.

Also on the list are European Union figures Jose Manuel Barroso, Herbert Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov wrote on his Instagram account Saturday that the ban is in response to U.S. and EU actions in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which he called "state terrorism."

Kadyrov was a separatist rebel in the first Chechen war, but switched sides in the second.