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Virus crisis in the West may result in anti-Russian sanctions' cancellation, says analyst

He did not rule out that when the crisis is past its peak, Italy and Spain, now both receiving assistance from Moscow, may raise the question of cancelling anti-Russian sanctions

MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. The current novel coronavirus pandemic may reconfigure the entire system of international relations, trigger the change of governments in many countries and, eventually, the cancellation of anti-Russian sanctions, the board chairman of the international discussion club Valdai, Andrei Bystritsky, told TASS in an interview.

The world is in panic, he said. "If this panic grows further, some fundamental political upheavals may follow and new people will rise to power in some countries," he speculated. "These people may go about the business of running world politics in a different way."

In case of this march of events the Western countries will have to establish relations with Russia "on fundamentally new principles."

"The chances the sanction policy will change in the process of or after the coronavirus pandemic certainly do exist," he said. "These restrictive measures look somewhat archaic, whatever attitude some may take to Russia."

Bystritsky does not rule out that when the crisis is past its peak, Italy and Spain, now both receiving assistance from Moscow, may raise the question of cancelling anti-Russian sanctions. However, no fundamental revision of the sanction policy should be expected in the near future, because "communication has been upset among the Western countries themselves." Besides, the question of sanctions is not on the current agenda at all, because both the United States and the European Union are entirely focused on the struggle against the pandemic.

"For the time being everybody prefers to ‘save oneself first’," Bystritsky said. "Cooperation is to be resumed. Then it will be quite possible to raise the issue of lifting the sanctions and of a different configuration of relations among countries."

Earlier, the chairman of the Federation Council’s international affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, said that amid the coronavirus crisis and volatile exchange rates the need for cancelling all economic sanctions had taken center stage. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked that this idea deserved attention, but making such decisions was not Moscow’s competence.

An outbreak of the novel coronavirus-related disease in central China late last year has spread to more than 150 countries. The World Health Organization has declared a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, about 350,000 people have contracted the virus around the world. The disease has claimed more than 16,000 lives. In Russia, 495 cases of the infection have been identified so far. Twenty two patients have been discharged from the hospital.