The senator spoke on Tuesday in the city of Maputo, Mozambique, before the Assembly (Parliament), and explained that Russia continues its development and is dealing with the pressure exerted on it.

As he pointed out, the authors of the economic, financial and commercial measures implemented against Russia, numbering over 10,000, admitted that they have exhausted the possibilities of continuing the sanctions war.

According to Matvienko, this unprecedented scope of restrictions against Russia is largely what triggered the global economic crisis. “The current situation in food markets, the disruption of supply chains and the huge increase in the cost of products carry great risks,” he said.

Russian policy warned that the most vulnerable segments of the population, including in African countries, will be the first to feel the consequences of the crisis.

Russia’s permanent representative to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, pointed out on Tuesday that the community bloc has already approached the limit of what is possible in terms of anti-Russian sanctions. “There is nothing left to sanction,” he said, referring to the new package of measures approved recently, and commented that if there is a seventh package, it can only be dedicated to gas.

He warned that in that case the EU would face “an order of magnitude of problems and internal contradictions more serious than even with oil.”

The EU summit agreed yesterday on a sixth package of sanctions against Russia that includes a postponed partial embargo on Russian oil, the extension of the blacklist, the exclusion of Sberbank and two other Russian banks from the SWIFT system and the ban on the broadcast of three Russian television channels in the territory of the European Union.

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