US has hand in creating difficulties for Russian economy - Russian Foreign Ministry

GENEVA, December 17. /TASS/. Washington certainly has a role in creating difficulties for the Russian economy, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Wednesday. “We have noted more than once that US administration representatives have repeatedly, with barely hidden satisfaction, commented, including publicly, on various economic complications and changes in economic indices that show various segments of the Russian market recently, including of the currency market,” Ryabkov told TASS. “I don’t want to speak once again of our principled non-acceptance of the American policy of exterritorial sanctions - we have spoken about that dozens of times,” he said. “But we do not doubt the fact that Washington, the US administration’s financial and economic bloc, deliberately and purposefully played a role in creating difficulties for the Russian economy,” he said. The positions of Russia and Western nations on the Ukrainian developments differ radically. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the intra-Ukrainian crisis, but the West accuses Moscow of participation in clashes in Ukraine’s war-torn southeast and has subjected Russia to sanctions. Russian officials and companies came under the first batch of Western sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes, after Russia incorporated Crimea in mid-March after a coup rocked Ukraine in February. The West announced new, sectoral, restrictions against Russia in late July, in particular, for what the West claimed was Moscow’s alleged involvement in protests in Ukraine’s southeast. In response, Russia imposed on August 6 a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United States and Norway. Russia has constantly dismissed Western allegations that it could in any way be involved in hostilities in the southeast of Ukraine. Read more