MOSCOW, Mar 14 Moscow won't ask US and Europe to lift sanctions, Western pressure will not change Moscow's course, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said on Monday. the economy and ordinary Russians, and to do this as a punishment for its sovereign political decisions… Therefore, sanctions as an instrument of pressure on us, firstly, are illegitimate, and secondly, they will not work,» Vershinin said.
Zakharova recalled that Russia until the last called for a dialogue on Ukraine «We will not ask for these sanctions to be lifted. We will simply continue to develop our economy and our ability to develop independently, relying on those friends and like-minded people that we have,» added the deputy minister in an interview with Izvestia. Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. In response to this, the United States, the EU countries and a number of other states, including Japan, introduced new sanctions against Russia and major Russian organizations. As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said earlier, the Western sanctions are very serious, Russia was preparing for them in advance. He added that they require analysis and coordination of departments in order to develop response measures that are in the interests of the Russian Federation. Slutsky saidDirector of the Department of Economic Cooperation of the Russian Foreign Ministry Dmitry Birichevsky told RIA Novosti that Moscow's reaction to Western sanctions would be prompt and sensitive, work on response measures was underway in all directions. He noted that in the face of increased restrictions, the Russian side is reducing the use of the dollar in foreign exchange reserves and external settlements, switching to non-Western capital markets, and also making efforts to protect investment projects from external negative influence. The diplomat stressed that Moscow regrets that the European Union unleashed a «total economic war» against Russia. At the same time, Birichevsky noted, EU sanctions cause enormous damage to the citizens of the Union itself and the reasons for their introduction are difficult to justify logically. The Russian Foreign Ministry later added that the lists of retaliatory personal sanctions against the West were ready.
