Medvedev: Europeans are twice as blown away after sanctions over Ukraine
The sanctions imposed by the West in 2014 due to the events in Ukraine forced Russia to reorient itself towards China. The European Union has suffered losses; in some cases, lost markets cannot be returned.
This was stated by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who was quoted by the government’s official website, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I recently met with a number of my colleagues from the European Union and I say: “Look what you are doing. Okay, you introduced sanctions, but you yourself suffer from them, you lost about 100 billion euros from this, according to some estimates even 200. And we, of course, lost something. Who benefits from this? You said that we will not be friends with you and will not communicate...” But this is at the level of the European Commission, but it is possible bilaterally,” Medvedev noted.
“The only thing I’ll remind you is that when all this started with the well-known situation in 2014, our trade turnover with the European Union was very significant - 417 billion dollars, and then crashed to about 250. Who benefited from this? I tell them all the time: “Look, this money simply cannot be returned. These are jobs, these are business earnings, and therefore the earnings of the people who work for you.” Who benefited from this? The Americans, by the way, are neither hot nor cold from this, because they still had approximately $25 billion of trade turnover with us. They didn't lose anything. The turnover is not very large considering the scale of both the American and Russian economies, but they lost almost nothing. And the Europeans were blown away twice as much,” the prime minister clarified.
“At the same time, our trade turnover with the People's Republic of China has grown very significantly. I remember how in the early 2000s I was at negotiations, then it took place in Shanghai. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin visited there, and we discussed the goal: $10 billion in trade turnover. It seemed very serious. And now we have more than 100 with the Chinese, and the goal is 200,” Medvedev said.
“Now there is a new team in the European Union, in the European Commission. She is not yet burdened with all sorts of different previous decisions, at least from the point of view of personal responsibility for them. They have a chance to fix it if they want to. As we have repeatedly said, we did not start this war and it is not for us to end it. They themselves must declare a truce, then everything can be returned to normal,” the head of government suggested.
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