PATRIOT PARK /Moscow region/. August 16. /TASS/. Washington’s anti-Russian sanctions have incurred serious damage to the global energy security, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said on Tuesday.

"The United States’ and Western countries’ policy of sanctions against Russia has negatively told on the global economy, especially on the energy sector, forcing the United States to use its strategic reserves of oil to stabilize prices and guarantee supplies to the domestic market and its allies. In this sense, Venezuela is a zone of increased strategic interest because it has energy and mineral resources," he said in a video address to the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security. "How does the United States want to get access to these resources - either by means of relations based on mutual respect, recognition of Venezuela’s independence, sovereignty and self-determination or using the strategy of destabilization, robbery, state coups, murders or through military intervention to change power and impose its hegemony?"

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country. After that, the United States and its allies imposed large-scale sanctions against Russia and intensified weapons supplies to Ukraine.

The European Union’s and the United States’ embargo on import of Russian oil has triggered a dramatic price rise, while Russia re-oriented its exports to other markets, first of all, to India and China and managed to raise its incomes, even despite discounts and lowered export volumes.