Russia likely to extend counter sanctions against EU — lawmaker

MOSCOW, June 22. /TASS/. Moscow is expected to extend its retaliatory measures against the EU and lifting the 28-member bloc’s sanctions "will yield little to the country," a senior Russian lawmaker, first deputy chairman of the lower house’s foreign affairs committee said on Monday.

"Russia will naturally extend its counter sanctions against the EU and the lifting of the EU sanctions against Russia will give little to us already," Leonid Kalashnikov said, explaining that "the US practically fully controls the European financial market."

"The US laws are extraterritorial and the access to financial markets was closed for us largely after America imposed its sanctions on Russia that it will never cancel," the lawmaker said.

In this situation, Russia should "develop its economy and its financial markets calmly, and adopt laws on foreign currency control and act like a large sovereign country does, namely like America," he said.

"They have shown us the path. Russia should protect its Constitution, and return to the priority of national legislation over the foreign one, as it was done in America, and withdraw from European conventions that harm rather than help us," the lawmaker said.

The EU Council at the foreign ministers’ level extended the economic sanctions against Russia on Monday for six months until January 31, 2016. The decision comes in an effort to implement in full the February 12 Minsk agreements on Ukraine, a spokeswoman for the council’s external affairs service, Susanne Kiefer said.