Brussels, 11/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 11 January, Russia's President Vladimir Putin described the European sanctions against his country in connection with the Ukrainian crisis as “a theatre of the absurd”.
“What the European Union is doing with those sanctions is nothing but a theatre of the absurd”, Putin said in an interview with German daily newspaper Bild. In Putin's view, “the West's sanctions are not aimed at helping Ukraine, but at geo-politically pushing Russia back”. He described the sanctions as “foolish”, adding that they are harming both sides. At the end of December, the EU decided to extend its sanctions against Russia for six months, stating that the sanctions were connected with full implementation of the Minsk agreements (see EUROPE 11458).
Putin said that Europeans “would be well advised to address the problems in eastern Ukraine more thoroughly”. He added that the Europeans perhaps had too many domestic problems of their own at the moment, but he nevertheless said he thought Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was trying to settle the crisis “honestly”.
Putin also said that anything missing in the implementation of the Minsk agreements depended “without any exception” on the Ukrainian government. “The most important aspect is the constitutional reform - point 11 of the Minsk agreement”, he said, stating that this reform - which is supposed to give autonomy to eastern Ukraine - should have been adopted at the end of 2015 (which is not the case). “That's not Russia's fault”, he added. In Putin's view, it is only after this constitutional reform that confidence-building and border security can follow.
He also acknowledged that the Western sanctions are harming Russia's economy. They are “severely” harming Russia's possibilities on the international financial markets, he said. “But the biggest harm is currently caused by the decline of prices for energy”, he stated. Putin added that Russia was in the process of gradually stabilising its economy. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)