Report: Russia hopes to cut dependence on US payment systems, dollar

MOSCOW, Aug 7 (PRIME) -- Moscow plans to speed up work to diminish dependence on U.S. payment systems and the U.S. dollar as a currency of settlements in response to the latest U.S. sanctions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview to the Foreign Ministry’s journal International Affairs seen by PRIME on Monday.

“We will obviously become more active in the work connected with imports substitution, cutting dependence on U.S. payment systems and on the U.S. dollar as a currency of settlements and so on. This has become a vital necessity,” Ryabkov said.

Still, Moscow hopes that no open confrontation will happen with Washington. “Nevertheless, I hope that there will be no confrontation and we will work toward finding ways to minimize the damage from this event if we are unable to normalize (the situation) completely,” he said.

The new U.S. sanctions will stay for a long time.

“This is not a one-day event, and it is difficult to forecast now how much time we will need to develop at least a more or less normal modus operandi with the U.S. We will try to do this...But the problem is that without approval of both chambers of the Congress, without decisions that will cancel everything that they have conjured up in the U.S.–Russia relations legally, it will take very much time and work to eliminate that, and it is a fact,” he said.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill introducing additional sanctions against Russia among several other states. The bill prohibits companies to invest more than U.S. $1 million in a single payment or more than $5 million during the course of a year in construction of Russian export pipelines, as well as provision of goods, services, technologies and information support for the construction.

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