MOSCOW, June 4. /TASS/. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin on Saturday said Washington and Brussels have exhausted their inventory of tools to constrain Russia’s development.
"The European Union has adopted the sixth package of sanctions against Russia," he said on Telegram. "Analyzing it, as well as the previous decisions by Brussels and Washington, we can conclude that the arsenal of means to curb the development of our country has been exhausted."
Volodin said "when taking new sanctions measures, Western politicians are forced to choose between a bad and a very bad scenario for the economies and citizens of their countries."
The lawmaker said Russia’s estimated losses from the ban on oil exports to Europe could amount to $22 billion a year. "But due to the rise in energy prices, which is provoked by the sanctions, and the redirection of Russian oil sales to Asian markets, the costs can be fully compensated. Or perhaps our economy will even be ‘in the black,’" he said.
Volodin said Europe, due to record high prices for energy resources, "will pay an extra of more than 250 billion euros annually," excluding the additional costs for the transition of refineries to new grades of oil.
"Washington is doing everything to ensure that the main burden of the implementation of sanctions falls on European countries," the Duma speaker said. "It’s deliberately weakening the economies of the EU states in order to make them even more dependent on the US."
"It wants to govern countries that previously sought greater independence," Volodin continued. "Now these states can hardly even think about it. They have more problems."
"By overcoming all sanctions, our country will only become stronger," he said.
On February 24 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. The US and its allies retaliated by imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia.