"Our partners should themselves grow into an understanding of sanctions' fallibility. Spain itself, for instance, has significantly suffered from sanctions and, according to preliminary reports, lost around 700 million euros due to sanctions against Russia and countermeasures that Russia had to introduce in response," the ambassador said.
Korchagin said that representatives of political and business circles considered sanctions a serious mistake and called for the restrictive measures to be lifted.
"These opinions make one inevitably come to a conclusion that the decision on the sanctions prepared by EU officials in Brussels has not taken into account people's views in specific countries at all," the diplomat concluded.
However, the attendance of the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 16-18 by Spanish companies was not affected by anti-Russian sanctions, Korchagin added.
"I think that sanction did not affect this [attendance of Spanish companies]..The forum aroused much interest primarily in Spanish business community, it was attended by a number of companies, including such high-profile firms as Amadeus, Fundacion Metropoli," Korchagin said.
SPIEF 2016 was attended by some 10,000 participants. According to the SPIEF Organizing Committee, at least 332 agreements worth more than a trillion rubles ($15.7 billion) were signed at the event.
Since 2014, the United States and the European Union have coordinated sanctions targeting Russian individuals and key sectors of its economy. The sanctions were initially imposed in response to Crimea’s reunification with Russia and Western allegations of Moscow's involvement in the Ukraine crisis.
Moscow has repeatedly refuted allegations of meddling into Ukraine's internal affairs. In response to the Western sanctions, Russia has sanctioned US individuals and also imposed a food embargo on some European countries.
