Russia Warns: “West will Face ‘Painful’ Response to Ukraine War Sanctions”
Atop Russian official has warned that Western countries will encounter a “painful” response to sanctions imposed on Moscow following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The comment by Dmitry Birichevsky comes after the European Union (EU) said on Tuesday it had frozen €13.8 billion ($13.8 billion) worth of assets held by Russian oligarchs, other individuals and entities because of the war in Ukraine.
U.S.-led measures have seen Russia isolated from the global financial system. For example, the U.S. has barred Russia from making debt payments using the money it holds in American banks, making it harder for Russia to repay its international loans.
Russia has already responded to U.S. sanctions with its own blacklists of Americans including the family of President Joe Biden, but this is largely seen as symbolic.
Russia’s central banks assets have also been frozen and major financial institutions in the country have been removed from the international financial messaging system Swift.
However, sanctions on Russia’s fossil fuel exports have contributed to soaring energy costs which are having a particularly marked impact on Europe.
Birichevsky, who is director of the Russian foreign ministry’s department of economic cooperation, said that sanctions Russia faces will have widespread consequences and that Moscow has not yet applied its “countermeasures in full force.”
“It is not Russia’s fault that Europeans are threatened with a winter without heating, and summer heat without air conditioning,” he said, “Sanctions against us are coming back to hit Western economies like a boomerang.”
“It is obvious that Western countries are already exhausting their own economies and their citizens with anti-Russian attacks,” he told state news agency RIA Novosti.
“At the same time, we reserve the right to tighten our special measures,” he added, although he did not specify further what they would entail, saying that they were being “worked out” by the Russian government.
“The restrictive actions of the West are sensitive for the Russian economy, but our measures in response can be very painful,” he said.
Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky said in his nightly video address that Russia “doesn’t have the courage” to admit defeat and said that Putin’s forces are “afraid of Ukrainians” and are relying on “bottomless stocks of old Soviet weapons.”
It comes as the U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday it would send an additional $1.7 billion in economic aid to Ukraine. European foreign ministers have approved a €1 billion ($1 billion) first installment of a €9 billion rescue package agreed in May.
