TOKYO, July 12. /TASS/. The Russian economy has managed to adapt to sanctions and Western companies did not succeed in isolating Russia using sanction pressure, head of the Moscow Office of the Japan Association for Trade with Russia and New Independent States (ROTOBO) Hase Naoya said in an interview with the Sankei newspaper.
"To put it short, things are going well," Naoya said, speaking about the Russian economy. The situation in it differs from 2014, when first sanctions were introduced due to the reunification with Crimea, he noted. "Having learned the experience of sanctions, <...> [the Russian side] was preparing to new sanctions," the expert said. Russia has managed to partly replace imported goods by goods of local production and set up parallel imports from China and other countries, Naoya added.
The reason why anti-Russian sanctions did not produce the desired effect was in the wrong assessment of the situation by the West, the expert said. "Western nations underestimated the level of economic globalization. Being governed by the perception of economic blocks of Cold War times, they reckoned upon isolating Russia with the use of sanctions," Naoya explained. "In reality, just 49 countries and territories sided with sanctions against Russia, making possible for it to continue trading with other Asian and African nations," he added.