Putin: Russia, EU both suffer from closed financial markets

MOSCOW, Mar 31 (PRIME) -- Moscow wants its problems with access to the European financial markets to be over and counts on mutual interest from its partners, as both Russian and E.U. companies suffer from sanctions, President Vladimir Putin said late Monday at a meeting with the Russian Direct Investment Fund’s CEO Kirill Dmitriev.

The E.U. and the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 due to its role in the Ukrainian crisis, including barring its banks from granting loans with a maturity of over than 30 days to largest country’s banks and some oil and gas companies.

“Problems of our partners are not only that some our markets are closed – the agricultural market in the first place – but there are also problems in financing, including financing in directions interesting for our European partners. And this, of course, displeases them,” Putin said.

“We will work on overcoming these problems together. I think everyone is interested in this.”

Dmitriev confirmed that the fund’s foreign partners stand against the sanctions. “We’ve been to Germany and Italy and have seen that turnovers of many companies have fallen by 20%, and that is why they all stand against the sanctions. We hope to strike milestone deals in the framework of joint Russia-France, Russia-Italy funds already this year,” he said.

Representatives of German, Italian and French businesses are working with their governments to inform them of the losses inflicted on European companies by the anti-Russian sanctions, he added.

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