MOSCOW, June 16. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after telephone talks with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell on Tuesday the topic of the European Union’s anti-Russian sanctions was not discussed.
"We never discuss sanctions with those who imposed them. It was their initiative and it is up to them to decide hoe efficient this initiative is working in their interests. We made our conclusion long ago," he said.
He noted that when Russia had called for easing the sanction pressure on other countries amid the pandemic, the West had interpreted it in its specific way. "I have seen it more than once that the Western media immediately interpreted our position as an evidence that we are calling for lifting the anti-Russian sanctions. This was not we called for. We called for lifting the sanctions off those countries that had suffered even before the coronavirus epidemic and it is absolutely inhumane to keep these illegal, illegitimate unilateral sanctions in place amid the pandemic," he said. "We meant the unilateral sanctions imposed by the West, first of all, by the united States, against Iran, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea. We never asked to lift the anti-Russian sanctions. We are able to address these problems by ourselves."
A source in the European Council told TASS on Monday that the European Union heads of state and government, who are to hold an online summit on June 19, would take a political decision on extending the economic sanctions against Russia expiring on July 31 for six more months.
Following the developments in Ukraine and Crimea’s reunification with Russia in 2014, the European Union imposed sanctions against Russia, which have been extended and expanded regularly ever since. Talks on visa-free travel and a new framework cooperation agreement were suspended, a number of Russian officials were banned to enter the European Union and their assets were frozen. Apart from that, the European Union imposed trade, financial and defense-related restrictions. In response, Moscow imposed a ban on imports of a number of food products from the European Union.