Recently, the EU has decided to apply sanctions against Russia for the 14 th time since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis. In this regard, European experts and press are raising their voices questioning the effectiveness of such sanctions.
Swiss Newspaper “Neue Züricher Zeitung” reported that the West failed to achieve a desired result through its sanctions against Russia. Contrary to the Western expectation, Russia’s economy is not in stagnation but has grown since 2022 far greater than that of the Western economic powers like Germany, France and the UK, it said.
Dutch Newspaper “NRC” also reported that although Europe praises itself for getting rid of Russian gas dependence, it paid Russia € 8.1 billion for liquefied gas in 2023 alone, 11% increase as compared with the year before. The newspaper pointed out that as long as many countries including China and India continue to buy Russian gas, the EU sanctions will not do much harm to Russia.
The Czech online magazine “Peak.cz” revealed that it is not at all easy for the West to bring Russia to its knees economically, quoting a report of the IMF which stated in April that the European economy is in stagnation, whereas the Russian economy is growing despite sanctions.
It continued that when Russia was excluded from SWIFT 2 years ago, many people expected that Russia would suffer from an economic crisis, but it faced none. On the contrary, Russia has easily overcome the Western sanctions and grown faster than other economically advanced countries in Europe while achieving self-sufficiency.
In this regard, Western media and economic experts noted that it was a mistake to have thought that the steady blow of sand of sanctions would someday impede the “gear box” of Russian war machine, knowing too well that sanctions were by no means a “cure-all”.
And they commented that the Western sanctions against Russia only had the Western economy suffer the consequences of its own deeds, and yet, the West still has to resort to sanctions because it has no other appropriate means of pressure.
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