Russia (bbabo.net), - The government has been preparing for the recognition of the DPR and LPR for several months, and Russia is ready for the economic consequences of possible Western sanctions, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at an extraordinary meeting of the Security Council. However, painless sanctions for those who impose them no longer exist, Director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Shirov told Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
In addition, according to Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Russia is in a sense more prepared for external pressure than in 2008. "We know all the problems, all the difficulties, all those proposals for sanctions that have been repeatedly broadcast to us from all the irons. We understand that the pressure will be prohibitive. But we understand how to resist this pressure," Medvedev said.
All sanctions against Russia that are painless for the US and Europe (restrictions against individuals and companies, a ban on a number of high-tech supplies, limited access to capital markets for state-owned banks, sanctions on the purchase of primary issues of public debt -) have in fact already been introduced, Alexander Shirov stressed. Only the "painful" ones remain - they include talk about disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system, and any restrictions on energy exports, including Nord Stream 2, and an embargo on Russian oil supplies.
"Of the most possible sanctions, only restrictions for Russian banks on transactions with the US dollar remained. In a sense, they can be painful. But, like any other restrictions, they limit the potential growth of the Russian economy not in the short term, but in the medium term," Shirov says.
According to him, the best system of protection against the consequences of sanctions in Russia has been created for quite some time, and in many respects it was created before 2014. This is a policy of protection against crises of all stripes: the creation of a "safety cushion" in the form of gold and foreign exchange reserves, a tight budget policy, a multi-channel financial system (the creation of the Mir payment system, a financial messaging system similar to SWIFT). But Russia is an open economy, so it is impossible to completely protect yourself from absolutely all external shocks, Shirov adds.
bbabo.Net