ST. PETERSBURG, July 11. /TASS/. The sanctions imposed by the West against a number of countries backfired at their initiators, Chairman of the State Duma, lower house of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin said during the 10th BRICS Parliamentary Forum.
"The sanctions backfired at their initiators: the United States lost its economic leadership. All attempts to regain it, including by weakening the European Union, did not bring results," he said.
Volodin noted that "Washington and Brussels tried to stop the development of our countries and other states by introducing illegitimate sanctions, declaring trade wars, stealing gold and foreign exchange reserves, using international payment systems and the dollar as an instrument of political pressure."
"Over the last ten years, over 21 thousand illegal sanctions have been imposed against the Russian Federation. Despite this, our country is strengthening, the economy has been able to adjust, and is showing strong growth," the Chairman of the State Duma added.
Volodin stressed that the dollar is losing its status as a world reserve currency.
"To ensure their financial security, sovereign countries, primarily the BRICS members, are beginning to abandon the toxic dollar. Last year, its share in export-import transactions within the framework of the association was only 28.7%," he said.
The 10th BRICS Parliamentary Forum is taking place on July 11-12 at the Tavrichesky Palace in St. Petersburg. Russia took the baton as BRICS chair on January 1. Currently, the group comprises ten countries. Since its founding in 2006, BRICS has gone through two waves of expansion. In 2011, South Africa joined the original membership, which included Brazil, Russia, India and China. In August 2023, six new members, including Argentina, were invited to join the association at once, but in late December it declined to join. The five new members of the association - Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia began to fully operate in BRICS on January 1, 2024.