On Monday the Russian stock market continued to plummet as Washington’s sanctions have frozen Moscow’s largest oil giants, Rosneft and Lukoil.
The US President’s sanctions also bans American companies along with individuals to do any business with Russia’s two largest oil companies.
The White House is threatening secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions which do deals with businesses that are Russian owned and operated.
Washington’s sanctions will also cripple Vladimir Putin’s efforts to continue to fund the Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine.
Revenues from oil and gas accounts for around a quarter of Russia’s budget for their war in Ukraine.
India and China have stopped purchasing oil from Russia amid Donald Trump’s sanctions.
The Kremlin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev is to speak with the Trump administration in an attempt to reverse the sanctions.
On Monday the Russian stock market fell by 3.2% and last week stocks plummeted 6.5%.
Investment banker Yevgeny Kogan said, “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. The ‘peacemakers’ have achieved nothing, and the situation is close to a dead end,” he wrote.
Shares in Rosneft fell 5.6% to 368.4 rubles and Lukoil plummeted by 6.5% and last week their shares dropped 12.2%.
Both of Russia’s largest oil and gas companies have lost more than 900 billion rubles, or £8.5 billion.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Tass in an interview that they are convinced Western sanctions will not be temporary and are a mechanism to apply systemic pressure on Moscow.
Zakharova said, “They declare their goal openly: financial and technological isolation, undermining prospects for long-term socioeconomic development, and inflicting the maximum possible damage on citizens with the aim of destabilizing the domestic political situation.
“We proceed from the fact that this policy is not temporary or targeted measures, but a mechanism for systemic strategic pressure on our country.”
“As for secondary sanctions, the collective West, by imposing them against sovereign states, is attempting to punish them for working with Russia and for defending their national interests,” Zakharova added.
The unwillingness of Western countries to acknowledge that their production and financial models are losing the competitive battle against the global majority is leading to chaos and disruption in all spheres of the global economy,” she continued.
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