Moscow is prepared for the possibility that harsh US sanctions could restrict its banks’ access to dollar transactions, the Kremlin has said, admitting that the potentially unprecedented measures have officials worried.
Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday that Moscow is well aware of the threat of massive sanctions coming from the American side amid an ongoing row over Ukraine. “Certainly, the Kremlin is concerned, because the sanctions behavior of the US is absolutely unpredictable,” he said.
The spokesman went on to say that Washington “has preserved its unpredictability in international matters in this regard. We have plans. There are plans for risk hedging, for minimizing the consequences of such unpredictable actions.”
“But I will say it once more,” he went on, “we are consistently calling for the US to refrain from provocative actions and from worsening tensions on the European continent.”
Bloomberg reported in December that the US and EU were considering potential sanctions, if Russia decided to invade Ukraine, that would target the nation’s biggest banks, restrict the ability of investors to buy Russian debt on the secondary market, and make it difficult for the country to convert rubles into dollars or other foreign currencies.