Moscow moved to welcome back Crimea, which was part of Russia for much of the past few centuries, until the Kremlin transferred it to control of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954; it remained under Ukraine when that became a separate country in 1991. Every faction in the Russian Duma submitted draft legislation on Monday officially reversing that 60-year-old decision.

The consensus in Moscow was so strong that even the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union is deeply reviled in Russia, endorsed Crimea’s move, telling the Interfax news agency that its independence “should be welcomed and not met with the announcement of sanctions.”

He added, “If until now Crimea had been joined to Ukraine because of Soviet laws that were taken without asking the people, then now the people have decided to rectify this error.”

The American sanctions targeted prominent Russian officials, but not those likely to have many overseas assets; the European list went after generally lower-level targets. As a result, the actions were met with derision and even mockery in Moscow. In one measure of the reaction, Russia’s battered stock markets rose sharply at the end of the day.

Image Vladislav Surkov, one of President Vladimir V. Putin’s most influential advisers, is a target of sanctions by the United States. Credit... Pool photo by Mikhail Klimentyev/Ria Novosti/Kremlin

“This is a big honor for me,” said Mr. Surkov, once called the “gray cardinal” of the Kremlin and known as the architect of Mr. Putin’s highly centralized political system. He told a Russian newspaper that he had no assets abroad: “In the U.S., I’m interested in Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock. I don’t need a visa to access their work.”