Mary Landrieu, and Harry Reid. On 24 March, Russia imposed retaliatory sanctions on 13 Canadian officials including members of the Parliament of Canada, banning them from entering Russia. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, said the sanctions were "a badge of honour". Former Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler also said that he considered the sanctions a badge of honour, not a mark of exclusion. In March 2014, The Christian Science Monitor reported, "The good news is that so far, Russia has shown no inclination to use the Northern Distribution Network as leverage in the wake of US retaliation for its troop movements in Crimea". Expanded Western sanctions in mid-March coursed through financial markets, hitting the business interests of some of Russia's richest people. The Americans centred on the heart of Moscow's leadership, though the EU's initial list shied from targeting Putin's inner circle. As ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor's downgraded Russia's credit outlook, Russian banks warned of a sanctions-induced recession, the country braced for capital outflows for the first three months of 2014 to reach $70 billion, more than the entirety of outflows for 2013, and Russian government-bond issues plummeted by three-quarters compared with the same period the previous year. Novatek, Russia's second-largest gas producer, saw $2.5bn in market value wiped out when its shares sank by nearly 10%, rendering Putin's close friend Gennady Timchenko, who has a 23% stake in the company, $575m poorer. "I do hope that there is some serious diplomatic activity going on behind the scenes," said one Russian banker, though others were more sanguine on the question of whether the sanctions would have any enduring effect, and Russians, top and bottom, seemed defiant. The official Russian response was mixed. The then Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Alexey Ulyukaev said that introduction of sectoral sanctions will lead to a serious decline of the Russian economy: economic growth of Russia will become seriously negative, the growth of volumes of investment will be even more negative, inflation will rise, and government revenues and reserves will go down. As well as differences between the United States and Europe as a whole as to how to respond to the Russian-backed incursion, those same differences have played out among Eastern European countries. A number of Russian citizens reported that they have been denied European visas after they visited Crimea after annexation. A Russian consumer protection watchdog OZPP