Russian Prime Minister: USSR lived for decades under sanctions
Russia is not going to persuade Europeans to lift anti-Russian sanctions, said by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the press conference following the talks with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, TASS reported.
“Lifting sanctions is a mutually beneficial matter and we should not persuade our partners to cancel anything, we don’t need it,” Medvedev said.
He also said that “our European colleagues need it, they should start an initiative themselves”.
“If they don’t want to, we will continue living with sanctions,” he added.
The prime minister recalled that sanctions are not ‘a matter of life and death’ for Russia. “We did not start imposing these sanctions and it is not us who should terminate them,” he added. The head of the Cabinet noted that the USSR lived for decades under sanctions and ‘nothing happened’.
Earlier, Medvedev cited data showing that the total loss of the European Union is about 100 billion euros. He announced in May that it was impossible to cancel the Russian counter-sanctions.
“It is impossible to do it. Of course, there should be mutuality. I am not even speaking about the fact that the sanctions on food imports were greeted by our farmers,” he said.