Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has spoken about the harsh impact on his country of sanctions in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but warned they will eventually backfire on the rest of the world.
In an interview with Tass published on Tuesday, Peskov said the measures that have isolated the Russian economy from the global financial system have been difficult, but hinted that they would simply push Russia towards “friendly” countries.
“The situation is not easy, it can rather be described as difficult in the face of this unprecedented economic war,” Peskov told Tass before the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, where Putin will speak on Friday.
“But there is also a positive side,” he said, “this situation is pushing us and our friendly countries to look for new ways of interaction, new interaction mechanisms and new financial settlement mechanisms.”
Shortly after Putin’s February 24 invasion, Russia’s economy was hit by sanctions imposed by the European Union, the US and their allies to prevent Moscow from funding its war machine.
The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a banking lobby group, said last week that Russia’s economy will shrink by 15 percent this year and 3 percent next year. Production in sectors ranging from aeronautics to the automotive industry has collapsed. In May, the number of cars sold across Russia fell by 83 percent compared to the previous month.
However, Russia has benefited from a rise in the price of its main oil and gas exports and its currency, the ruble, has rallied.
With the EU announcing cuts in Russian energy purchases, Bloomberg reported on Monday that half of Russian oil shipped by ship now goes to Asia, mostly to China and India, which have not joined in sanctions against Moscow.
Peskow said there was a move away from Europe and the US and that there were “new centers of power in the East” including “China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and many, many other countries” and Latin America.
He said that during the COVID-19 pandemic, “politicians in many countries made a large number of mistakes” that were “exacerbated by the economic war waged against Russia.”
“Russia is too big a country for the war against her not to boomerang on her,” he said. “Now we see, like all these restrictions, the sanctions put in place [against Russia]hit the prices of energy, food and so on,” he said, referring to high inflation in the US and Europe.
“Keeping Russia out of international life is an absolutely pointless and basically impossible thing,” he added.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov waits to watch the Victory Day military parade in Red Square in central Moscow, May 9, 2022.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/Getty Images
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