NEW DELHI, July 18. /TASS/. Western sanctions introduced against Russia won’t bring it down to its knees, while third world countries will suffer, Sri Lanka’s acting president, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Monday.

"Do you think sanctions will help? It will only drag the prices up. […] Let us look at the sanctions that are being imposed and ask ourselves if this is necessary. The sanctions won’t bring Russia to its knees, but it will bring the rest of the third world to its knees," he said at an international panel discussion on preventing hunger and famine as quoted by India’s Doordarshan TV channel.

According to the official, the sanctions affect such countries as Sri Lanka where food products are not generally accessible. "Our issue in Sri Lanka is partly self-made and partly due to the global crisis," he said, adding that "a global crisis and an internal crisis both have come together and brought us to a level where many estimate that as much as 6 million people are facing malnutrition."

Overall, Wickremesinghe thinks that the Western anti-Russian sanctions and the events in Ukraine caused the global food and fuel crises.

The situation in Ukraine and the barrage of sanctions that the United States and the European Union imposed on Russia have disrupted grain supplies, raising the risk of a food crisis in a number of countries. Wheat and corn prices have soared since the beginning of the year. A UN Security Council meeting on May 21 revealed that global wheat stocks would last for only ten weeks and the situation was worse than it had been in 2007 and 2008.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier that the global food crisis, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and miscalculations by Western countries, had erupted long before the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. According to Russia’s chief diplomat, the current situation exacerbated the problem and the Western sanctions became one of the main reasons for the food supply disruptions.