Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that the feigned partnership of the European Union and the United States is based only on unbridled Russophobia, and it does not pursue any constructive solutions to any challenges. She was speaking to Vesti FM radio station on Wednesday.
“This is sort of a quasi-alliance with the EU, sort of a quasi-partnership, with nothing behind it but this feverish, as we like to say, Russophobia. And it’s worthless, because alliances should be focused on constructive, positive goals, and not endless battles against windmills that they themselves draw, imagine and then attack,” she said, noting that both parties have violated their international obligations by doing so.
On Tuesday, Washington introduced a new round of sanctions over the Navalny case against Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko, Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov and four more individuals, as well as a number of enterprises and institutions.
The US sanctions particularly include a “denial to Russia of any credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance” by US government agencies and a “prohibition on the export to Russia” of security-sensitive goods and technology. On Tuesday, the EU also introduced new restrictions over the situation around Navalny.
Terming the sanctions by the United States and the European Union against Russian individuals and organizations as intervention in Russia’s internal affairs, Russian presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov added that such restrictions were unacceptable.
“We regard any such restrictions as absolutely unacceptable,” Peskov said on Wednesday while addressing the media. “They cause considerable harm to relations, which are already in a deplorable condition. They [sanctions] are nothing but interference in Russia’s internal affairs,” he stressed.
“If one talks about specific people against whom the so-called sanctions, or rather restrictions, were introduced, then it is practically a duplication of those restrictions that are placed on these people under the Russian laws,” the Kremlin representative said. He added though that the new sanctions introduced against several Russian citizens essentially duplicate the restrictions placed on them under the Russian legislation.
Reverse Sanctions
TASS reported that Russia’s agencies will submit to the country’s leadership a draft of retaliatory measures in the wake of the latest restrictions by the EU and the US.
Dmitry Peskov stated “We will coordinate our own sanctions. The agencies concerned will submit the corresponding proposals to the leadership. The measures will be approved, made public and let known to our opponents in this affair”. He added that the response to these restrictions would accommodate Russia’s interests in the best way.
Peskov said that the principle of requital would be observed. “There is the principle of requital and it cannot be avoided in interstate relations,” he remarked.
Dhruv Ashok 
Shobhil Shrivastava 
Satish Chogule