NEW YORK, February 15. /TASS/. Western countries are ready to ignore international law in order to punish insufficiently loyal partners, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said in an article for Newsweek.

"We remain fully committed to uniting our resources to design new financial instruments independent from political trends in Washington, Brussels or London, where authorities are ready to neglect national legislative provisions and postulates of international law in order to punish insufficiently loyal partners. It is unacceptable when the debt burden of developing countries (or rather, their ability to get out of the debt trap they were forced into over decades) is at the "mercy" of the central banks of the United States and Europe, " Antonov pointed out in an article on the priorities of Russia's chairmanship in BRICS.

The Russian diplomat noted that a situation when a few countries feel entitled to dictate their will to others, "threatening to cut off access to global economic processes," confiscate their assets, and ruin [the] well-being of ordinary citizens, is "fundamentally wrong and inconsistent with prevailing tendencies."

Antonov also pointed out that all the difficulties in using national currencies can be solved "if there is a will." "A significant part of issues are related, again, to the long-standing imbalances rooted in the dominance of the dollar and euro. An increase in the use of national currencies - such as renminbi, rubles, rupees, dirhams or others - in mutual trade will inevitably result in the advancement of the independent payment infrastructure and in smaller transaction fees. This is a classic free market rule, which Western partners are increasingly trying to manipulate," he stressed.

"It seems they do not realize that by endless sanctions and threats of "allegedly legal" seizure of foreign reserves they are digging themselves into a deeper hole," Antonov concluded.