MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Russia says it has sufficient “tools” to counter the latest U.S.-led anti-Moscow sanctions to be slapped later this month by the European Union on the Russian nation over the war in Ukraine.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Friday that “there certainly are tools” for responding to the fresh EU sanctions, adding that the previous sanctions had backfired and caused more damage to the European Union itself.
Grushko told the Rossiya-24 TV channel that the EU’s tenth package of sanctions planned against Moscow will not have an impact on the Russian economy.
He pointed out that the sanctions had failed to achieve their goal as “they changed neither Russia’s foreign policy course nor its desire to become a full member of the new multipolar world order.”
Grushko said the U.S.-led sanctions had been the cause of increased economic difficulties for the European Union.
“If we speak about the energy sector alone, Western economists estimate that the overall damage caused by the energy sanctions amount to about one trillion euros,” the senior Russian diplomat noted.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated earlier on Thursday that the EU’s tenth package of sanctions on Russia, which Brussels planned to introduce by February 24.
The fresh sanctions will include new export bans worth more than 10 billion euros ($10.7 billion), von der Leyen said during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The sanctions “will further starve Russia’s military machine and shake the foundations of its economy”, she claimed, saying that the new restrictions fill the gaps left by the previous sanctions.
Russia announced Friday that will cut oil production by 500,000 barrels per day next month after Western countries capped the price of its crude over its action in Ukraine.
“As of today, we fully sell all our crude output, but as we stated before, we will not sell oil to those who directly or indirectly adhere to the ‘price ceiling,’” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.