PRAGUE, August 14, /ITAR-TASS/. Sanctions against Russia are senseless and only feed distrust between countries, Czech President Milos Zeman said on Wednesday.
“The use of any sanctions is a senseless and inefficient measure because it typically triggers countermeasures,” he said in an interview with the Czech television. As a result, he said, a widening spiral only harms economic relations and builds up mistrust between countries.
He said that farmers should be paid compensations from the European Union’s reserve funds, since private companies were responsible for neither the European Union’s sanctions nor for Moscow’s counter-sanctions.
On August 7, Russia imposed a package of measures to respond to economic sanction from the United States, Australia, Canada, the European Union and Norway. Thus, Russia banned for a term of one year the imports of fruit, vegetables, milk and dairy products from these countries. Some types of ready-to-eat meat and fish products (with the exception of sausages) have not fallen under the ban. According to the Russian Federal Customs Service, these countries exported 9.1 billion U.S. dollar worth of products, which are now on the sanction list, in 2013, with the European Union countries accounting for 6.5 billion U.S. dollars of that sum.