- Putin said most Asian nations “find the destructive logic of sanctions inacceptable [sic],” Tass reported.
- Moscow has pivoted to Asia for buyers of its energy exports as Western sanctions pile up.
- Putin said the West was failing and Asia is the future, given its US-beating economic growth.
Vladimir Putin hinted that he expects Asia to steer clear of the West’s energy sanctions, as he underscored Russia’s blossoming ties with China.
Speaking on Wednesday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, the Kremlin leader said, per Russian News Agency Tass:
“The overwhelming majority of Asian-Pacific nations find the destructive logic of sanctions inacceptable [sic], and business relations [with the region] are based on mutual benefit, cooperation and the addition of economic potentials for the benefit of citizens.”
Since Russia’s war with Ukraine, Russia’s ties with China have seemingly strengthened while its relationship with Europe erodes in the face of Western sanctions.
The US and its G7 allies last week backed a plan to cap the price of Russian oil, to hit at Moscow’s revenues from the sales. Now Europe is looking at setting a limit on prices for the country’s wholesale natural gas after state-controlled Gazprom indefinitely halted flows to the continent via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
In his Wednesday speech, Putin called the European plan for a gas price cap “stupid,” while claiming that Russia has no problems selling its energy around the world.
German Gref, the CEO of Russia’s top lender Sberbank, told reporters at the Vladivostok forum that the country had fallen out with its traditional partner Europe. As a result, Moscow is increasingly getting closer to and relying on Beijing.
“I don’t think Russia will return to such a situation of the dollar’s influence on the domestic economy,” Gref said, according to a Reuters report.
The loss of European buyers hasn’t stopped Moscow from finding a new market to sell its vast oil and gas resources however, as Asian buyers have snapped up its energy on the cheap.
In a sign of Russia’s relationship with Beijing growing even stronger, Putin said China will pay for its natural gas in a 50-50 split between rubles and yuan, Reuters reported.
The arrangement marks a shift away from the euros as Western sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine block payments using the dollar and euro. Now, Russia is the third-biggest market for yuan transactions outside the Chinese mainland.
At the same time, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet at a summit in Uzbekistan next week, underlining the importance of the China-Russia relationship to Beijing, per Wall Street Journal.
Putin said the West was failing, because its aggressive attempts to isolate Russia from the global stage was destroying the global economy. Meanwhile, Asia will claim the future given its US-beating economic growth, he said.
Putin addressed Asia-Pacific’s growth, saying that it has been consistently higher than global growth rates for some time. Asia’s GDP has increased by around 5% annually, he noted, while the US and European Union economies have lagged behind, rising by 2% and 1.2%, respectively, Putin said.
“We have not lost anything and will not lose anything,” Putin said.
This story has been updated with comments from Gref.
