Photo: Global Look Press
Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro said on 15 January that Russia has seen its economy boom despite Western sanctions.
"Extensive war tactics have been launched against the Russian economy... during these years Russia, under the leadership of the great President Vladimir Putin, has grown to become the fifth economy in the world and the first in Europe," he said in his annual address to Venezuela's National Assembly (parliament).
Maduro noted that as a result of the anti-Russian sanctions, the European economy "has fallen, while the Russian economy has shot up like a rocket".
In addition, Maduro said that Venezuela is among 18 countries against which the US "violates economic, commercial and human rights on a daily basis, maintaining more than 930 illegal criminal sanctions".
Earlier, on 3 January, political analyst Alexei Martynov, an associate professor at the Russian government's Higher School of Finance, told the Izvestia newspaper that the economic losses of European Union (EU) countries as a result of anti-Russian sanctions fall on the shoulders of the bloc's citizens. In his view, "the voice of common sense is strongly marginalised in modern Europe." Yet European countries are the first to suffer from sanctions.
Gunnar Beck, a member of the European Parliament for the German Alternative for Germany party, said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper on 19 December that the anti-Russian sanctions have not had the desired effect and have harmed the European Union rather than the Russian Federation.
Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Centre for Conjunctural Studies at the Higher School of Economics, told Izvestia that the next package of anti-Russian sanctions by the European Union will not significantly damage the Russian economy. He noted that Russia will "sort out" these supplies - for example, by shifting them to eastern markets, especially for oil and gas.
The European Union approved the 12th package of anti-Russian sanctions on 18 December. The restrictions entail new export restrictions against the Russian Federation on dual-use products and technology, as well as a ban on the direct or indirect import, purchase or transfer of diamonds, including jewellery, from Russia.
Western states have stepped up sanctions pressure on Russia against the backdrop of a special operation to protect the population of Donbas. The decision to launch the operation was taken by the Russian President in the context of the deterioration of the situation in the region as a result of Ukrainian shelling.
Izvestia/GN.CZ-JaV_07
https://iz.ru/1634787/2024-01-15/maduro-ukazal-na-podem-ekonomiki-rossii-nesmotria-na-sanktcii
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