MOSCOW, December 1. /TASS/. Moscow is certain that US sanctions will remain in place for many years to come, and thus long-lasting sanctions are taken as a key base-case assumption in Russia’s policy-making process, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
"We have no doubt that these sanctions will stay in place for years to come," he said. "This is what we are guided by when shaping our policy," the Kremlin press secretary stressed.
Peskov said that he had not yet seen the remarks of US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt, who in an interview with the Financial Times stated that Washington plans to pull out all the stops in order to achieve a halving of Russia’s oil and gas revenues by the end of the 2020s. The US diplomat also emphasized the need to maintain sanctions on Russia in the coming years. In turn, the Kremlin spokesman said that Moscow did not need any such "statement by the esteemed representative" of the United States to understand that the US sanctions regime is here to stay and would last a long time.
"We also have no doubt that the United States will keep trying to put pressure on Russia, particularly by exerting pressure on the entire system of international trade and economic relations, and, in essence, destroying the current architecture of relations, because [US actions] are nothing more than illegal attempts to put the screws to the Russian economy," Peskov noted.
"This is another thing that’s clear to us and that we duly take into consideration in our policy-making," the Russian presidential spokesman stressed.