MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Friday said US statements that sanctions on Russia could be lifted are too vague and can’t be taken seriously.
"As for the possibility that the sanctions will be lifted in the event that one or another solution is found with respect to Ukraine, we have heard a couple of elliptical public statements by US administration officials on that matter, but one has to understand that they invariably make the removal of the restrictions contingent on compliance by Russia with some unrealistic demands from Washington in the Ukrainian context," he said during a panel discussion entitled "Russia-US: What Are the Limits of Confrontation?" that was held at the Valdai Discussion Club. "These pronouncements can’t be treated seriously."
The diplomat said that Russia has been under sanctions for a very long time, effectively since 1949, when the Western bloc set up the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, better known as COCOM, to restrict exports of strategic goods and technologies to the USSR and other socialist countries, which wasn’t dissolved until 1994.
"In 1974, the discriminatory Jackson-Vanik amendment was passed," he continued. "It wasn’t canceled until 2012, but immediately after the US approved the so-called Magnitsky Act."
"It is clear that the US, with its bipartisan anti-Russian consensus, won’t lift the sanctions, regardless of any further developments," Ryabkov said. "Essentially, along with control over global news media, sanctions remain one of the few still-working levers of pressure on the outside world that are capable of creating certain inconveniences for us, but unable to influence our policy, including the progress of the special military operation.".
