President Putin: Western sanctions “failed”

The Kremlin boss said that the West’s plan was to “quickly upset the economic situation, sow panic in the markets, collapse the banking system and disrupt the supply of shops”.

President Putin stressed that this strategy had “failed” and backfired when it made the Western economic situation “worse”.

The West has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia since the Kremlin launched its military operation in Ukraine on February 24.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on April 18 that Western sanctions had failed and backfired. Photo: Reuters

President Putin stressed that “Russia has withstood unprecedented pressure”, arguing that the value of the ruble has strengthened and his country recorded a historically high trade surplus of $58 billion in the first quarter. 2022.

In the opposite direction, according to the Kremlin boss, it is the wave of Western sanctions that causes inflation to rise rapidly and reduces the quality of life in the US and Washington’s European allies.

President Putin said that Russia needs to speed up the process of using national currencies in international trade within the framework of the new conditions.

For his part, the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina affirmed that the Bank of Russia will not try to reduce inflation at all costs even though inflation in Russia has increased to a record high since the beginning of 2002, because of this. that would “hinder the business from adapting”.

Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina. Photo: Reuters

The current inflation situation is caused by low supply, not high demand, and the Central Bank of Russia aims to lower inflation to 4% in 2022 while the Russian economy adapts to sanctions. This adds.

In the third quarter of 2022, according to Ms. Nabiullina, the Russian economy will enter a period of structural change and search for new models.

The World Bank predicts that Russia’s economy will shrink by more than 11% this year. The organization also lowered its forecast for global economic growth for 2022 from 4.1% to 3.2% because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.