UPDATE: Foreign ministry: Russia to retaliate by better economy

(rewrites)

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (PRIME) -- Russia’s response to new U.S. sanctions will be a better resistance of its economy and companies to external shocks and the central bank is already reducing investment in the U.S. treasuries and raising the share of non–U.S. dollar assets in its reserves, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told PRIME on Thursday.

“From the political point of view this is the way we should take. We should get rid of dependence on the dollar in the widest sense of the word,” he said.

“We should create our own or multilateral, with other partners, payment systems, which would ensure functioning of the financial blood carrying system of the Russian economy without it getting into the vice of American financial regulators and American banks, which abuse their controlling position over any dollar transactions and hurt not only normal functioning of international economic relations, but also the image of the American currency as the key international reserve currency.”

The U.S. imposed new anti-Russian sanctions on August 8 to punish Moscow for alleged involvement in poisoning of the Skripal family in March in the U.K. The first package, which includes a ban on supplies of dual-use goods and services to Russia, came in force on Wednesday.

Ryabkov said the sanctions announced by the U.S. are ungrounded and would not reach their goals.

Alexei Kondratyev, a deputy chairman of the defense and security committee of the parliament’s upper house Federation Council, told PRIME that Russia will stop purchases of all dual-use electronic goods and component parts from the U.S. regardless of its sanctions, and will buy the electronics from third countries, including China.

“We will suspend purchases of all American component parts anyway after we have heard the bell…Other countries have similar models of goods that we buy in the U.S., including China. The weapons market is built on universal all-round exchanges, so we will find a way out in any case,” Kondratyev said.

“I can say with a 100% certainty that you won’t need to wait for long for a reasonable response from Russia. You can’t fly into space using our engines and introduce sanctions against us, it is beyond common sense.”

He said that Russia simply has to protect itself and retaliate.

But Ryabkov said that Moscow won’t take any measures that would hurt its own companies. “We should not consider any options that include ideas like suspension of exports of rocket engines…or aviation titanium that is produced by our joint venture with Boeing, or any other positions on our exports to the U.S.,” he said.

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