The Russian government offered Saturday to drop its sanctions on imported goods from the European Union if the EU would reciprocate.
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker rejected the idea, saying the sanctions would stay in place until Russia stopped fomenting strife in the Ukraine.
The EU imposed sanctions in late July as punishment for the Kremlin’s actions supporting pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels, pushing the country into civil war. The following month, Russian forces invaded the country to support the rebels.
The U.S. and the EU responded by imposing sanctions on Russian goods, particularly energy, its main export. Russia responded by banning most western food imports.
They are evidently having an impact, aided by the fact energy prices have declined worldwide. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last week his country was on track to lose between $130 billion-$140 billion a year due to declining exports, equivalent to 7 percent of its overall economy. The EU is on track to lose an estimated $50 billion a due to Russia’s sanction, Reuters reported.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told state-sponsored media Saturday that they were eager to see an end to the sanctions: “We don’t expect anything from our European partners. The only thing we expect is for them to leave the meaningless sanctions spiral and move onto the path of lifting the sanctions and dropping the blacklists. This, in turn, would allow us to drop our lists.”
Juncker said Saturday that the sanctions would stay in place until Russia stopped meddling in the Ukraine, and they had not seen evidence that Russia has refrained. “One has to maintain those sanctions as long as, on the ground, we do not see Russian gestures aimed at pacifying the region,” he told media in Luxembourg, his home country.
Ukraine is a former member of the Soviet Union.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the break-up of the old Soviet republic a tragedy and has pushed to expand the Kremlin’s sphere of interest over the former USSR countries. Russia annexed Crimea, formerly a semi-autonomous part of the Ukraine, in March.
