TEHRAN, Jul 7 - The Russian finance minister has dismissed a recent round of US sanctions against his country, saying Russia's financial system is resilient to external pressures.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - "Russia's economy has already proved to be resilient to external restrictions in recent years," Anton Siluanov said on Saturday.
He made the remarks a day after US President Donald Trump imposed another round of sanctions on Russia over accusations that Moscow was involved in the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain last year.
The 66-year-old former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious outside a restaurant in the southern English city of Salisbury last March. Both were put into a coma following the attack and at least three others were sickened.
The fresh sanctions ban US banks from providing loans to Russia, and Washington will also be opposing any loan extension to Moscow by international institutions.
"With regard to the public debt and corporate debt, we are confident that the financial system we have created allows us to meet the needs of the budget and enterprises in borrowed resources," Siluanov said.
Washington first imposed sanctions on Russia last August after the State Department said Moscow had violated the 1991 Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) Act in the Skripal case for the deadly use of nerve agent Novichok in the attack.
British and American intelligence officials have accused Moscow of involvement in the deadly poisoning attempt.
The Kremlin has vehemently rejected any involvement, saying the substance could have originated from the countries studying Novichok, including the UK itself, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
Fresh US sanction against Russia, act of economic terrorism
Iran condemned US’s new anti-Russia sanctions as an act of economic terrorism.
“Americans' insanity of using economic terrorism to an extreme extent and [imposing] unlawful and unilateral punishments on those countries that do not think and behave like them is a failed trick that has lost its efficiency and will definitely have no result for that country," Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Moussavi said in a statement on Friday.
Source: Press TV