Sanctions have deprived Russia of some $160bn in investment from overseas, President Vladimir Putin said today, but they weren’t the only reason for the country’s current troubles. In an address to the Council of Legislators in St. Petersburg, a defiant Putin also blamed the country’s economic crisis on the drop in oil prices and an internal imbalance in the economy, particularly a disconnect between productivity and wage inflation; but he remained defiant, pointing out that the crisis had not turned into a collapse and that Russia’s retaliatory sanctions on Western food imports had left the market open for domestic producers.
Source: Lenta