Russia has no illusions about Western economic warfare, Dmitry Peskov has said
File photo: The Moscow Kremlin and the Red Square, October 2023 © Sputnik/Alexey Nikolsky
Moscow is aware that Washington will try to maintain its illegal embargo, but the US is not the entire world, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday.
Peskov was commenting on the statements by US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt, published by the Financial Times earlier in the day, about Washington’s plans to cripple the Russian economy in the long term.
“We have no doubt that the US will continue to try to put pressure on Russia, including on the entire system of international trade and economic relations, which is basically being destroyed,” Peskov said.
“It’s probably worth noting that the US is a large economy, but not the only one. The US economy is not the world. There is another country on America’s heels – China,” Peskov added.
The US and its allies imposed a unilateral embargo against Russia in 2022, citing the Ukraine conflict. The International Energy Agency has predicted that Russian oil and gas exports could drop by at least 40% by 2030 if the sanctions continue.
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“We’re going to do everything we can to help make that true,” Pyatt told the Financial Times. He said the goal of the embargo was to “change Russia’s behavior” but also to make sure that Moscow would be in no shape to wage war going forward.
Pyatt took the energy portfolio at the State Department in September 2022. He is best known in Russia for being the ambassador to Ukraine and taking part in the infamous 2014 phone call with Victoria Nuland about “midwifing” the upcoming coup in Kiev.
In December 2022, the G7 countries decreed a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil, banning Western companies from providing insurance and other services to anyone who would seek to sell above it. Intended to reduce Moscow’s energy export profits, the measure has failed completely.
While oil and gas revenue dropped by 46% to 426 billion rubles ($4.6 billion) in January 2023, by October it was up to 1.635 trillion rubles ($17.6 billion), with EU officials forced to admit that “almost none” of the cargoes had been sold at or below their preferred price.
