Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that European companies have lost 250 billion euros in the past year and a half due to Western sanctions against Russia.
“According to very conservative estimates, European companies have lost up to 250 billion euros in the past year and a half due to unilateral Western sanctions, a significant amount,” the minister said in a meeting with ambassadors accredited to Moscow about the war in Moscow. Ukraine, quoted by the official news agency TASS.
Lavrov argued that sanctions against Russia, imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, will not disappear in the near future.
“The West has decided to destroy the world economy to teach Russia a lesson, and not to allow Russia to play a role in an international arena commensurate with its history, its size and its capabilities.”he argued.
“We fully understand that the sanctions imposed against us in the near future and even in the distant future will not disappear, their authors say,” adding that Russia creates trade mechanisms that are “not controlled” by the West and that it plans to rely “only on itself” in crucial sectors of the economy.
Lavrov reiterated that the process of ‘de-dollarization’ will continue to gain momentum in the world.
‘There is a gradual and constant decline in the share of the dollar and the euro […]. The ‘de-dollarization’ processes will continue to intensify,” he said.
The head of Russian diplomacy emphasized that the process of “transition to national currency involves the largest economies” such as China, India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Kenya and Egypt.
Lavrov further argued that the United States is “bankrupting its European vassals,” forcing them to give up all Russian assets, including gas, while continuing to “buy uranium and critical materials from Russia.”
Source: DN
