EU citizens feel the pain instead of Moscow, says the president
The Russian ruble is getting stronger at the same time as EU citizens have to cope with higher prices due to sanctions that simply do not work, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic complained on Tuesday. He called the EU’s declaration of a partial oil and gas embargo “insulting” and said Croatia had little traction within the bloc, unlike neighboring Hungary.
“The sanctions do not work. Russia does not feel them, the ruble did not collapse. EU citizens have to pay the price, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin can smile contentedly, and oil and gas will go elsewhere because demand is high, “said Milanovic in Zagreb, commenting on the EU’s latest addition to the anti-Russian embargo.
He added that EU sanctions in their current form “would not be effective even against Serbia” and that the only thing that is likely to happen is higher prices for citizens of EU countries.
EU leaders on Tuesday agreed on a new sanctions package that would ban the import of all Russian oil supplied by ship – but not by pipeline – and stopped to ban the import of natural gas.
“The key player is Hungary,” said Milanovic, noting that Budapest was responsible for the pipeline exemption. The reasons cited by the EU for not banning Russian gas were “an insult to common sense”, he added.
At the same time, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi claimed that Western sanctions will have a “maximum impact” on the Russian economy “from this summer onwards.”
After meeting with EU leaders in Brussels on Tuesday, Draghi said the oil embargo would affect international trade “for many years, if not forever.”
Brussels does not care what Croatia thinks because Croatia does not care about asking questions, Milanovic lamented, claiming that Zagreb can not even acknowledge its own interests – and when it does, they will not care to fight for them.
In April, the Croatian president said that unless the United States and the EU guaranteed the rights of Croats in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zagreb would block Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO applications. However, the nationalist HDZ party, which has a parliamentary majority, ruled out such an action. Instead, it was Turkey that withheld NATO’s offers from two Scandinavian countries, citing their alleged support for Kurdish militants.
(RT.com)
Source: sn.dk