A defiant Russia yesterday dismissed unprecedented Western sanctions over Ukraine after Brussels and Washington unveiled the toughest punitive measures against the Kremlin since the Cold War.
The third round of US and EU sanctions aims to force Russia to change tack and halt its support of separatists in Ukraine by targeting its vital financial, arms and energy sectors.
However, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov made light of the restrictions, also designed to hit the oligarchs in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
Photo: AFP
“And what about the sanctions? In for a penny, in for a pound,” he quipped to journalists.
Financial institutions put on a brave face, saying their operations would not be affected, while a top official unleashed a diatribe against the administration of US President Barack Obama.
“Obama will go down in history not as a peacemaker — everyone has already forgotten about his Nobel Peace Prize — but as a US president who started a new Cold War,” Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the Russian parliament’s lower house, said on Twitter.
There was no immediate official reaction from Putin’s office or the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but Moscow has long insisted sanctions would merely bring Russia’s society together and make its economy more self-reliant.
The stepped-up sanctions came as Moscow dismissed claims it was responsible for supplying the missile that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, and fighting in Ukraine showed little sign of abating.
They will notably make it tougher for Russian state-owned banks to access European financial markets, forcing their costs higher and hobbling an already struggling economy.
The Central Bank of Russia said that financial institutions were working normally and that if necessary, it would adopt measures to protect targeted lenders, which include the country’s second-largest bank, VTB.
Economists have warned that Europe’s own economy would also suffer from the so-called “sector sanctions” against its biggest source of energy and its major trading partner.
Despite the dismissive talk in Moscow, a number of economists acknowledged the new restrictions would be painful to absorb for Russia, and could stoke social tensions because its economy is sliding toward a recession.
“The current amount of corporate debt is US$700 billion; these debts should be refinanced,” FBK Strategic Analysis Institute Director Igor Nikolayev said, pointing to a lack of cheap loans in Russia.
Nikolai Petrov of the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics said that this time, the sanctions would be felt by everyday Russians — and predicted they would drive an even greater wedge between Putin and the West.
“The confrontation will increase abruptly. Putin has been practically driven into a corner and this man does not make concessions under pressure,” he said.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS