After the European Union leaders agreed last week on the first day of the European leaders’ summit to extend sanctions against Russia for another six months, which were imposed in response to Russia’s annexation of Crime in 2014, the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev issued warning against imposing new sanctions on Russia. He warned that such a move will be answered with an equivalent reply, “Our partners from the European Union will gather in July to discuss a number of decisions. And if they pass decisions concerning new sanctions against Russia we would give a symmetrical reply. If they won’t, we are going to remain on the positions that we currently have”. He has also said that Moscow might lift the embargo on food staffs from certain foreign countries if the West lifts anti-Russia sanctions. Russia banned agricultural imports from sanctioning countries in August last year. The current restrictions are applied to meat, poultry and fish, cheese, milk, fruit and vegetables from the United States, the EU countries, Australia, Canada, and Norway. The embargo was introduced for one year with possible prolongation if the situation fails to improve.

Some senior European lawmakers have also criticized the EU sanctions on Russia, calling them as guided by ‘far west’; indicating the United States. In a statement circulated on Friday by the press service of Leonid Slutsky, head of the Lower House Committee for International Affairs, the lawmaker stated that when the European Union had extended the anti-Russian sanctions it was following the guidelines issued in the “Far West” and was putting itself in a situation with no clear way out. The UN estimates claiming that Russia’s losses from sanctions had amounted to between US$50 billion and $52 billion, while the countries that had imposed the restrictions had lost up to $100 billion. He wrote in the statement, “Russia is tired of repeating the fact that it is not a part of the Minsk agreements as well as the internal conflict in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the European Union continues to ignore the real state of events as it prefers to ignore the blatant violations of the Minsk agreements by Kiev. These are the well-known double standards and again they are hurting only themselves”.