Medvedev believes West’s anti-Russian sanctions are to stay for long

The anti-Russian sanctions are likely to stay in place for long as the United States and EU countries are trying to formalize them in legislation, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday.  

"I have spoken about the sanctions more than once: we should be prepared to live under sanctions indefinitely long," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 television channel.

"Just look at what our friends overseas and in Europe are doing! They are enshrining these sanctions in law, they are codifying them. They are initiative a great deal of laws on top of various executive orders [U.S. former President Barack] Obama has issued. They are trying to pass laws to formalize these sanctions as standing, like the Jackson-Vanik amendment," he said.

So, in his words, the sanctions are very much unlikely to be lifted soon. "In this sense, we cannot count on their indulgence," he said. "And we don’t need it because, as life has shown, we can develop rather well even in conditions of the sanctions. And what we have achieved in industry and in agriculture was achieved not thanks to but despite as we had to restructure our work."

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