MOSCOW, July 6 The withdrawal of all Finnish companies from the Russian market did not produce any results, President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview with the Monde newspaper.
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«As for the sanctions, no Finnish company will continue to operate in Russia. We are one of the very few countries in this situation. Unfortunately, this mechanism seems to be ineffective,” the head of state said.
Niinistö added that Western countries have introduced many more restrictions on Moscow than in 2014, but their effectiveness is low. In his opinion, this became possible thanks to the circumvention of sanctions and the preservation of trade relations with Russia by many countries outside Europe.
As Anton Loginov, trade representative in Finland, emphasized, Helsinki underestimated the impact of restrictive measures on the national economy. Trade with Russia in 2023 may drop to 4.5 billion euros.
According to Finnish media estimates, local companies have lost about four billion dollars due to the withdrawal from the Russian market. The energy company Fortum, the construction company YIT and the air carrier Finnair suffered the most.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that the country will cope with the sanctions pressure that Western states began to exert several years ago and continue to intensify. According to President Vladimir Putin, the policy of containing and weakening Russia is a long-term strategy of the West, and sanctions have dealt a serious blow to the entire global economy.