EU restrictive measures: Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov's comment for the Wall Street Journal

Submitted on Thu, 09/15/2016 - 18:17

Permanent Representative of Russia to the EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov answers a question by the Wall Street Journal, 15 September 2016  

Question: Today the Council of the EU prolonged by 6 months the application of another set of EU anti-Russian sanctions over the situation in Ukraine. What is your comment on that? 

Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov: This decision only proves that the EU is still unable to critically assess its own policy towards Russia and continues to be unwilling to hear an increasing number of voices across EU member states calling for normalisation of Russia-EU relations. So-called sanctions are not an issue in our contacts with the EU since they are a problem unilaterally created by our EU partners. We expect that at some point the EU becomes brave enough to resolve it.