Russia’s losses due to sanctions reach $160 bln – Dzhaparova

According to experts, Russia's losses due to the sanctions reach $160 billion, First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Emine Dzhaparova said.

"According to various experts' estimates, today the losses that Russia bears due to the sanctions reach $160 billion. It is clear that the Kremlin has not been able to fully integrate the occupied Crimea into the national economy, despite the fact that they are trying very hard to do it. There is transport, financial, trade blockade," Dzhaparova told Interfax-Ukraine in an exclusive interview.

The deputy minister said that of the available instruments of struggle, sanctions are perhaps the most effective.

According to her, from the very beginning of the occupation of Crimea, the EU, United States, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and other states have applied personal and sectoral sanctions aimed at forcing the Kremlin to end its occupation of Ukrainian Crimea.

"These sanctions concern, first of all, the top leadership and politicians of the aggressor state who participated in the approval of the decision to start an aggressive war against Ukraine, against judges and punitive bodies of Russia involved in human rights violations in the occupied territories, as well as against companies and businesses of the oligarchs, close to the Kremlin," Dzhaparova said.

She also said the sanctions envisage a ban on the import of products from Crimea, banned flights to airports and entrances to seaports, the provision of tourist services, exports of dual-use products and Russia's access to important technologies, union restrictions on trade and investment were imposed.

"We must understand that sectoral sanctions have their greatest effect in the interval of eight to ten years, that is, in the medium term. These sanctions doom Russia to constantly roll back, because the world, technologies are developing, Russia does not have access to them, and this is a direct consequence of it criminal politics," she said.

Dzhaparova said that sanctions continue and will increase, and not only in the context of Russian crimes in Ukraine, but also in the context of Russian crimes in other regions, including within the country, in particular, the persecution of opposition forces, the use of chemical weapons, the use of defamatory campaigns against the West, inducement of migration crises, interference in elections.

"I remember an interview with the Russian president, who said: 'Yes, we did not care about these sanctions.' It seems to me that there is an element of dishonesty in this, because, in our assessment, Russia suffers from the sanctions, both in short, in the medium and in the long term," she said.

The deputy minister also said that when preparing the Crimean Platform summit in August 2021, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry pays great attention to the issue of sanctions.

"We see that the occupying state is struggling to bypass the existing restrictions. Together with our partners, we intend to make efforts to assess the effectiveness of the Crimean sanctions, agree on the basic principles of the sanctions policy against Crimea and close those loopholes that the Kremlin is using," she said.

Source: www.en.interfax.com.ua