BRUSSELS, June 25. /TASS/. When pursuing a policy of sanctions pressure on Russia, the European Union goes nowhere, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov told reporters commenting on a proposal by participants in the EU summit in Brussels that the European Commission should develop concrete options, including economic sanctions, in response to Moscow’s possible steps.
"This wording cannot induce great joy," Chizhov said, adding that the summit could have been expected to come up with at least not only extra restrictive measures against Russia, but also, on the contrary, certain steps aimed at mending the ties between Russia and the European Union, Chizhov added.
"But no, this did not happen," he stated.
"And the policy of so-called sanctions in itself is a road to nowhere and evidence of the intellectual poverty of those who contrive all that," the envoy said.
Originally, sanctions were supposed to be an instrument of last resort, which is applied when all the other instruments fail. Moreover, it is the United Nations Security Council alone that has the prerogative to impose them on a state, he recalled.
"However, now the notorious ‘sanctions cudgel’, or rather a boomerang has actually become the first and only means of foreign policy of the European Union and other states of the collective West, which supersedes any diplomatic efforts," Chizhov said.