BERLIN, May 16. /ITAR-TASS/. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has come against the West’s economic sanctions on Russia.

Such measures can hamper a program for overcoming the economic crisis in Cyprus, Anastasiades said in an interview with Germany’s financial daily Handelsblatt.

“If economic sanctions are imposed against Russia, they will have a negative impact on the reforms that we had coordinated with the ‘troika’ of international credit providers - the European Commission, the ECB [European Central Bank] and the IMF [International Monetary Fund],” he said.

After the financial crisis in 2013 "the presence of Russian capital in the economy and the banking system remains strong," Anastasiades said.

For example, the Bank of Cyprus has six representative offices in Russia, he said, adding that Russian businessmen were clients of the Bank of Cyprus.