MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. Anti-Russian sanctions are not intended to support Ukraine, but to cut off Russia from world markets, Alexander Dudchak, a leading researcher at the Institute of CIS countries and an expert with the Other Ukraine movement, told TASS.

"This is their [Western countries’] traditional desire - to take away from everyone and divide among themselves. The Americans are all right with creativity. They have both grand conceptions to cover up their actions, and pirate-like approach: to rob everything that can be robbed. So, they came up with anti-Russian sanctions. Previously, they looked for a pretext to stop the construction of Nord Streams. They even used Alexey Navalny (included in the list of terrorists and extremists - TASS) for it: "If something happens to him, we will stop the construction of Nord Streams." It is for this reason that such a large-scale conflict in Ukraine was provoked," the expert explains.

According to him, attempts to cut off Russia from world markets are completely pointless, since the demand for Russian oil and gas will remain stable.

"That’s Sisyphean task what they are doing. Problems for Russian exports will only increase the price, as was already the case in 2022, when, with a decrease in physical volumes of exports, Russia compensated for this by increasing prices to such an extent that the costs of Nord Stream paid off in one year. Of course, the Americans would be happy if everyone bought only from them, but they are not able to physically provide all consumers with gas. This will hit the world market, but not all countries are idiots. Someone agrees to bend to America, but everyone has a different degree of flexibility. And the population of each country cannot be fooled forever," Dudchak concluded.

Earlier, Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine Nikolay Kolesnik wrote in an article for the European publication Euractiv that Western sanctions against Russia could not prevent it from achieving record levels in the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Moreover, Moscow, in his opinion, can further strengthen its position on this market. Kolesnik also admitted that the sanctions did not prevent work on the implementation of a new liquefied gas production project, Arctic LNG 2, which will also provide large volumes of gas for export, including to European countries.

On November 2, 2023, the US Treasury included Arctic LNG 2 on the sanctions list, and also set January 31, 2024 as the deadline for completing transactions with the energy project. However, the West, especially Europe, is showing restraint in introducing direct sanctions against Russian LNG projects, since EU countries continue to depend on gas exports from Russia. According to the Federal Statistics Service of Russia, in December 2023, LNG production amounted to 3.2 million tons, which is 6.6% more than in December 2022, and 5.6% higher than in November 2023. LNG production in December was the highest in the entire history of the Russian gas industry.