MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has said that Russia is prepared to build separate relations with the European countries, if they are unprepared to tackle problems together.
"We are prepared to build our relations with the European countries on the bilateral track. There is nothing very difficult about that," Medvedev said in an interview to a group of Russian television broadcasters. He recalled that all decisions in the EU were made collectively. In his opinion, the European Union’s current policies towards Russia were "shortsighted."
He recalled that when the first restrictions were introduced in 2014, Russia-EU trade stood at $417 billion only to have slumped by $250 billion.
"Who benefited from this?" Medvedev asked. "I keep telling them [Europeans] all the time: there is no chance of having this money back. It’s been converted into jobs, businesses’ revenues and wages of their employees," Medvedev said.
Also, he drew attention to the fact that "the Americans do not care" about the worsening of Russia-EU economic relations, because the "approximately $25-billion trade turnover between US and Russia has remained unchanged, so they have lost nothing."
"The Europeans’ trade has shrunk by half," Medvedev reiterated. Also, he pointed out that "at the same time [Russia’s] trade with China has grown very significantly. He recalled Moscow and Beijing had set a target of building up bilateral trade to $200 billion.
