Russia will demand compensation for sanctions – Medvedev
Russia will assess the damage done to its economy by Western sanctions and demand restitution at some point down the road, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.
Commenting on the latest batch of restrictions imposed on Moscow by Washington last week, the official, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, claimed that the West is waging a “war without rules” on Russia.
The US has sanctioned more than 4,000 Russian individuals and companies since February 2022, when the Ukraine conflict began. The EU, UK, Canada, Japan, and several other nations have also imposed similar restrictions on Russia.
On Monday, Medvedev said that Moscow was going to “be evaluating [the damage done] so as to be able to demand [compensation from] the countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia.”
He suggested that “one could start systematizing and evaluating the damage done to countries [that have] suffered from sanctions adopted in circumvention of the UN Security Council.” The former Russian head of state added that quite a significant number of nations would be subject to potential claims and that a “register of losses inflicted by crimes of the colonial epoch and neo-colonialism” would likely be necessary to get this process off the ground.
Medvedev stressed the importance of “seeking justice from former colonial powers.”
Last week, the deputy chair of the Security Council argued that Moscow should exploit every weakness of the US and its allies to inflict “maximum damage” on them. Reacting to the sanctions announced by the US Departments of State and Treasury last Wednesday, Medvedev insisted that Russia should retaliate in every possible way instead of just ignoring the Western punitive measures.
The latest sanctions target 300 additional individuals and entities in Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Türkiye, including those in the energy, metals and mining, and financial sectors. According to the US authorities, the measures are intended to sever the “remaining avenues for international materials and equipment… from third countries.”
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that Washington was thus “increasing the risk for financial institutions dealing with Russia’s war economy and eliminating paths for evasion.”
Estimated by the Department of the Treasury to impact more than $100 million in trade between Russia and its foreign partners, the latest US sanctions package is one of the largest since the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict.
The measures compelled the Moscow Exchange to suspend all trade in the US dollar and euro last week.
