MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. Head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE) Alexander Shokhin is confident that the main threat from the US anti-Russian sanctions lies in their expansion to Russia’s partners in European countries, he stated during the Russian-Turkish business forum.
"It’s not about which sanctions the Americans will introduce against us. If they ban import of Russian products, for example, it would not actually hurt anyone, no one will notice it, especially because the Americans are very flexible - they make exceptions for the Russian products they really need: rocket engines, titanium, some other commodities," Shokhin noted.
"We are concerned by the threat of secondary sanctions. The thing is that our European partners, [our partners] from other countries, who form part of the global financial relations, are afraid that secondary sanctions would affect them if they cooperate with Russian business," the RUIE head stressed.
He added that the union supports the EU in the establishment of a mechanism analogous to SWIFT and the monetary fund, as well as the EU’s orientation towards conducting transactions in national currency in order to lessen the dependency on the US.
The expert added that he does not expect the sanctions to be lifted in the next five years. He noted that the Russian economy adapted to the sanctions, however, business suffers from uncertainty, as it "impedes realization of the companies’ investment plans, and, moreover, restricts bilateral and multilateral cooperation," he stated.