RTFri, 13 May 2022 21:41 UTC
© numbeos/GettySt.Basil Orthodox Cathedral and Minin & Pozharskiy monument in Moscow, Russia.
Claims by high-ranking officials that the Russian economy is crashing are completely inaccurate, according to former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl, who spoke to RT about the global crisis.
She explained that the Russian economy is an important part of the global economy, especially though not exclusively due to its role in the supply of commodities.
These include not only oil and gas, but also uranium, important metals, and other materials that are crucial for the world economy.
Kneissl said it was incorrect to state that the Russian economy is suffering due to sanctions. Any such claim is a "complete misassessment," she added.
"One thing is certain, we are only in the middle of a global economic situation where we see interdependence," said the former minister. "Oil is a globally traded commodity, and if it's not flowing west, it can easily flow south, north, east. And this is already happening."
The fact that the Russian ruble is now increasingly supported by commodities constitutes "an interesting development in this monetary world because it has gained strength due to the fact that oil, gas and other important commodities that you cannot easily replace are at its backbone."Referring to the global economic crisis, Kneissl said:
"We have seen an energy crisis and galloping inflation ever since 2021 at the latest. Now, a lot is blamed on the war [in Ukraine], on Russia... That's not true... but unfortunately that is what you hear from European central banks. The entire make-up of the crisis was here long before."
Comment: Switzerland appears to be the first European country to hedge on the U.S.-decreed sanctions package:
The Swiss government on Thursday reported that 6.3 billion Swiss francs ($6.33 billion) worth of Russian assets have been frozen under the country's sanctions.
The report said the figure indicates a decrease from the roughly 7.5 billion Swiss francs (over $7 billion) in funds the government reported frozen on April 7.
A senior official at the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) agency overseeing sanctions, Erwin Bollinger, pointed to fewer funds (over $2 billion) newly frozen than those that had been released. "We can't freeze funds if we do not have sufficient grounds," Bollinger told journalists.
Switzerland's bank lobby estimates that the country's banks hold up to $213 billion of Russian wealth. Its two largest lenders, UBS and Credit Suisse, each hold tens of billions of francs for wealthy Russian clients, it says.
Data shows that Credit Suisse alone froze around 10.4 billion Swiss francs ($10 billion) of Russian clients' money through March as part of sanctions imposed on Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.
SECO officials said on Thursday that banks and asset managers can provisionally freeze funds, though the funds needed to be released if they could not establish that the assets were directly owned or controlled by a sanctioned individual.
"The amount of assets frozen is not a measure of how effectively sanctions are being implemented," Bollinger said, adding that asset freezes were not the most important measure "by far" in the wide-ranging package of sanctions.
Comment: Switzerland appears to be the first European country to hedge on the U.S.-decreed sanctions package: