The Kremlin said on Monday that no sanctions will ever be able to force Russia to change course on Ukraine, just hours after both the United States and European Union indicated they were considering additional sanctions.
The West has imposed thousands of different sanctions on Russia over the 2022 war in Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of Crimea in a bid to sink Russia’s $2.2 trillion economy and undermine support for President Vladimir Putin.
Putin says the Russian economy, which has grown faster than G7 countries and defied Western predictions of a crash, has endured well and he has ordered businesses and officials to defy the sanctions in every way they can.
“No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about,” Peskov told Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he is ready to move to a second phase of sanctioning Russia, the closest he has come to suggesting he is on the verge of ramping up sanctions against Moscow or its oil buyers over the war in Ukraine.
The European Union’s preparation of new sanctions against Russia is being closely coordinated with the United States, EU Council President Antonio Costa said on Monday.
Peskov said that Europe and Ukraine are doing everything they can to draw the United States into their orbit.
He said the Kremlin’s preference was to resolve the conflict through diplomatic means but if that was impossible then what Putin calls the “special military operation” would continue.
Russia’s war economy grew at 4.1% in 2023 and 4.3% in 2024, despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the economy is slowing sharply this year under the weight of high interest rates.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)