US sanctions are sign of dollar crisis & decline of confidence – Lavrov
The US dollar system has completely discredited itself and the confidence in the greenback is falling very sharply, according to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Sanctions by Washington are a sign of that.
Russia is working on ways to cut its dependence on the US and the dollar system, Lavrov said Friday during his visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“We are already drawing conclusions, doing everything necessary not to depend on the countries that are acting that way with their international partners,” Lavrov said. According to the Russian foreign minister, US sanctions undermine global trust in the world’s most used currency.
Lavrov was reacting to the fresh US sanctions against Russia introduced Thursday. 33 people and entities were added to the US Treasury blacklist of Russian defense and intelligence sector.
“More and more of our partners in Asia, in Latin America, start to draw the same conclusions [about the US dollar]. I think that this trend will only continue," Lavrov said.
In August, speaking on the same issue, Lavrov said that US sanctions are “illegal, they undermine all principles of global trade and principles approved by UN decisions.”
Russia’s leading banks have said that slashing the dependence from the US dollar is inevitable, but would be a tough challenge. “You cannot immediately abandon the dollar. Probably, impossible taking into account its role in the economy. But if we do not start, we will never come to this, so we need to start now and we are already doing such work,” said Russia’s second largest bank CEO Andrey Kostin last week.
For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
