The Russian Ambassador to Ireland has said an Taoiseach Micheal Martin needs to acknowledge that the main cause of the global food and energy crises is down to the sanctions being enforced on Russia.
Ambassador Yuri Filatov released a statement this evening in which he calls out Mr. Martin for refusing to question “certain erroneous assumptions” about Russia.
The statement reads: "Speaking in Brussels on May 31 about the latest package of EU sanctions against Russia, Taoiseach Micheal Martin said that there was no doubt in his mind that ‘part of Putin’s strategy was to create an energy crisis and also then to create a food crisis’.
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"It is unfortunate that the Taoiseach does not even question certain erroneous assumptions about Russia.
“It would help to admit something that by now is a common knowledge – that all along it had been EU sanctions against Russia, as well as mistaken financial and economic policies by the European governments that significantly distorted world energy and food markets in recent months,” he said.
Mr. Martin's exact words spoken in Brussels on Tuesday morning were: “There’s no doubt in my mind that part of Putin’s strategy was to create an energy crisis and also then to create a food crisis.”
Mr. Filatov then accused the Taoiseach as well as other EU leaders of placing the blame on Russia and insisted that it will not solve any of the existing problems.
He said: “That has been clearly demonstrated by the failure of the overall approach of the EU and the US to the situation in Ukraine, where their mistaken patronage of the ultranationalist anti-Russian regime, their policy of avoiding political settlement in Donbass, their insistence on NATO expansion and their refusal to discuss with Russia security guarantees led to the current military conflict.
“All that they in turn are now trying to portray as a Russia’s responsibility. It is the West’s responsibility and it will have to face the consequences of its shortsightedness. Regrettably, it might be slow in coming – the results of the EU summit once again point at the acute deficit of common sense and rationality among European political leaders.”
This comes after EU leaders agreed to terminate most Russian oil imports into the bloc by the end of 2022 as part of a new package of sanctions on Moscow.
Additional new sanctions will be legally endorsed on Wednesday, June 1, 2022.
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