Russia sees ‘decades’ of Western economic sanctions ahead, official says

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meets top military officials in the Kremlin amid the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk in August, 2024.

Russia see its economy navigating “decades” of economic sanctions from the West, according to a foreign ministry official.

“This is a story for decades to come,” Dmitry Birichevsky, a Russian foreign ministry official, said Friday at a forum in Moscow, Reuters reported. “Whatever the developments and results of a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, it is, in fact, only a pretext.”

After invading Ukraine in February 2022, Russia became the most-sanctioned country among nations targeted by the West with economic restrictions.

Others includes long-sanctioned countries like Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, which Birichevsky said Moscow is collaborating with to form an “anti-sanction” coalition.

“The sanctions were first introduced much earlier. Their ultimate goal is unfair competition,” Birichevsky said in a panel.

The US Departments of State and Treasury have imposed sanctions on over 300 individuals and entities that support Russian military aims, according to a June report from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The sanctions mainly target entities in the energy, metals, mining, and software sectors, which are integral to Russia’s war efforts.

Birichevsky said the sanctions have made Russia ramp up production of some goods it would have previously imported.

“In the 1990s, we thought that if we had oil and gas, we could buy everything else abroad. Now we cannot buy that,” he said.

The sanctions have also forced Russia to consider using barter trade with China to bypass the restrictions, according to a report from Reuters on Thursday.

Even with the sanctions, Russia’s economy is growing, but at a slowing rate, and experts say trouble is coming for the country as its period of isolation from large swaths of the global economy drags on.

GDP growth in the second quarter slowed to 4% from 5.4%, marking the lowest rate of quarterly economic growth since early 2023, according to an AFP report. GDP grew 4.7% in total in the first half of 2024.