MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. Sanctions are harmful to the global economy, and more countries are coming to understand that, so sanctions will be removed with time as relations between Moscow and Washington improve, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the China Media Group ahead of his visit to China.
"Sanctions and restrictions neither surprise nor scare us, they will never make us abandon our independent, sovereign development path," he said. "I believe that Russia either must be a sovereign state or there will be no Russia at all and the Russian people will undoubtedly choose the first option," Putin noted.
"There is no other way for us but we understand that our partners seek to use these sanctions and restrictions to hinder our development," he went on to say and added that "I have no doubt that… it will lead to nothing."
Putin was confident that that kind of policy "is harmful, first and foremost, to those who initiate it."
"I believe that common sense will eventually prevail and all the illegal restrictions, which are harmful for the development of the global economy, will be removed with time, while we will be able to improve relations with all our partners, including the United States and other countries that impose sanctions dancing to the US tune," Putin noted. The Russian president pointed out that "those… who danced to the United States’ tune are beginning to suffer from the US moves [to introduce restrictions] against those very countries."
"All these things will gradually - and I am not saying this only for the sake of rejoicing and being ironic - but all this shows that these tools cannot be universal and sooner or later it will become evident that they are harmful to everyone, including those who come up with such initiatives," Putin noted.
"I expect that one way or another, our relations will eventually return to normal," the Russian president concluded.