Russia Needs to Be Economically Independent Amid New US Sanctions - Author

Sputnik has discussed the new round of US sanctions on Russia with Dr. George Szamuely, political analyst and author of "Bombs for Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia".

Sputnik: In your opinion, what is the goal of the new US sanctions? What does Washington hope to achieve by this?

George Szamuely: The goal was spelled out rather nicely in an editorial in the Washington Post the other day by a former Acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell; he was Director of the CIA during the Obama years. The goal is to inflict so much hardship on Russia that there will be riots and so much pain in the country that the people would just turn on the government of Putin, and the country will just simply collapse; disintegrate into a series of civil wars, disintegration into different entities; a worse crisis than even what was in the 1990s. That's the basic goal of US policy. That's why it's one wave of sanctions after another. And that's not going to stop because even as we speak there's a new batch of sanctions being prepared in Congress which, as Lindsey Graham, a charming fellow from South Carolina, said, that we're going to throw the kitchen sink at Russia. So, this is just simply a part of this wave of sanctions that will just simply go on in perpetuity.

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Sputnik: In your view, what should be Russia's response to the new round of sanctions? I think the interesting thing is that when you look at President Putin's attitude, his response, his humility, at the way that they interacted at the recent meeting in Helsinki, the willingness to go to America or be it they want some kind of agenda of course; and obviously the return invite back to Russia; what is President Putin's endgame? What is he trying to achieve? Because it's as though his hands are tied and he's just going along with it and showing his humbleness, but what is the end result going to be because there's just a continuance of separation and the unraveling of these two great powers' relationships?

George Szamuely: I think that originally Putin had great hopes that there would be some kind of a partnership between Russia and the United States which would be very helpful in addressing problems in the Middle East, particularly on Syria but maybe also on the Israel-Palestine question. He thought that maybe it would also be helpful on issues such as Iran and North Korea.

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I think Putin now sees that there's just simply no hope for any kind of detente with the United States. It's just not going to happen. The Russophobia that is gripping the policy-making elites of the United States is now so intense that it's not going to change. It's just hopeless to think in terms of any serious change.

From Putin's point of view, I think he has to turn to a different global coalition of allies, primarily China, India and Iran. He has to just simply forget about the United States. Most important, I think he needs to ensure that Russia is as economically independent of the US as possible.

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There should be no business at all with the United States because these sanctions are just going to be a nightmare, and particularly on the question of sovereign debt. So, sovereign debt, just cut it out altogether. Russia can pay for its sovereign debt through its own funds. It doesn't need to go to the international markets to finance its sovereign debt because if it tries to do that it's going to be very vulnerable and the Americans are going to really hit it if it tries to finance its sovereign debt. So Russia needs to be as economically independent as possible.

The views and opinions expressed by Dr. George Szamuely are those of the analyst and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.