Putin lambasts Western trade sanctions on Moscow

On the eve of a visit to China, Russian leader Vladimir Putin blasted Western sanctions as his country’s economy teetered on the brink of recession, wounded by trade curbs and the cost of his war in Ukraine.

Russia and China jointly opposed “discriminatory” sanctions in global trade, Putin said in a written interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency published on Saturday.

Putin will be in China, Russia’s biggest trading partner, from Sunday to Wednesday in a four-day visit that the Kremlin has called “unprecedented.”

The Russian leader will first attend the two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin. The security-focused SCO, founded by a group of Eurasian nations in 2001, has expanded to 10 permanent members that now include Iran and India.

Putin will then travel to Beijing to hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attend a massive military parade in the Chinese capital commemorating the end of World War Two after Japan’s formal surrender.

Earlier in May, Xi attended a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square marking the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany. It was Xi’s 11th visit to China’s giant neighbour since he became president more than a decade ago.

Russia has been hammered by multiple rounds of Western sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. US President Donald Trump said he might impose “massive” sanctions on Russia depending on whether progress was possible in his bid to secure a peace deal.

“To sum up, economic cooperation, trade and industrial collaboration between our countries are advancing across multiple areas,” Putin said of China, which the West accuses of backing Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine.

“During my upcoming visit, we will certainly discuss further prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation and new steps to intensify it for the benefit of the peoples of Russia and China.”

When Western nations severed ties with Russia after Moscow’s launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China came to the rescue, buying Russian oil and selling goods from cars to electronics that pushed bilateral trade to a record $245 billion in 2024.

China was by far Russia’s leading trading partner by volume and transactions between the countries were almost completely carried out in rubles and yuan, Putin said.

Russia was a leading exporter of oil and gas to China and the two sides continued joint efforts to reduce bilateral trade barriers, he added.

“In recent years, the export of pork and beef to China has been launched. Overall, agricultural and food products occupy a prominent place in Russia’s exports to China,” he said.

Russia sees economic growth in 2025 slowing to 1.5 per cent, far below the earlier 2.5 per cent forecast, as high interest rates imposed to reduce inflation have stifled borrowing, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said recently.

Russia’s war economy grew robustly at 4.1% in 2023 and 4.3 per cent in 2024, far faster than G7 countries, despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine

in 2022, but it is slowing sharply this year.

Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned in June that Russia was on the brink of slipping into recession unless monetary policy changed.

Russia’s highest military spending since the Cold War has stoked inflation, which prompted the central bank to raise its key interest rate to 21% in October, the highest level since the early years of President Vladimir Putin’s rule in 2003.

The central bank cut to 20% in June and then to 18% in July, but the economy is still shackled by the cost of credit and labour shortages, according to analysts.

Siluanov told Putin that the Economy Ministry now saw growth of at least 1.5% this year. The official forecast for 2025 was 2.5%.

“If this year we see rather tough conditions for the implementation of monetary and credit policy, we see that the rate of economic growth will nevertheless be no less than 1.5 per cent this year, at least according to the assessment of the Economy Ministry,” Siluanov said.

“A balanced budget will give more opportunities to the central bank to soften monetary and credit policy, which means that credit resources will be more accessible.”

Reuters in January reported exclusively that Putin had grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia’s wartime economy, particularly with a cut to investment by major companies due to high interest rates.

Agencies