Cyprus official says EU’s anti-Russian sanctions inefficient

MOSCOW, Sep 19 (PRIME) -- The E.U. policy of anti-Russian sanctions is inefficient, Alexandros Zenon, the permanent secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Cyprus, told PRIME on Tuesday.

“We have never thought that sanctions themselves are our goal, and they have proven to be inefficient on the other hand. Russia should remain a strategic partner of the European Union within an array of international issues,” Zenon said.

“We should find ways to maintain channels of communication with the Russian authorities and gradually develop a political solution that would allow us to keep relations with Russia,” he said.

The sanctions were imposed in March 2014 against Russian and Ukrainian individuals and companies that the E.U. says are guilty of disrupting the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The E.U. has been regularly prolonging the sanctions for six months since then. On September 14, the E.U. Council prolonged the sanctions until March 15, 2018.

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