Russian senator calls for ALL unilateral SANCTIONS to be lifted to prevent coronavirus causing global economic crisis

The spread of Covid-19 may send the global economy into a lengthy recession, but lifting sanctions that aren’t backed by the United Nations may help avoid a total catastrophe. That's according to a senior Russian senator.

The drop in energy demand, unstable currency exchange rates, and the threat to people’s safety have put humanity at risk of a major economic crisis which “won’t spare anybody,” Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Russian Senate, warned.

Developing vaccines and working towards new agreements on oil prices are good measures to deal with the difficult situation, but one “extremely important factor” is being neglected, he wrote on Facebook.  

This is “the artificial hurdles to the economic development of a rival, masked as political retribution for unworthy behavior” or unilateral sanctions, the senator explained.

There is an urgent need for a global agreement on the simultaneous and complete lifting of all economic sanctions, except those imposed by the UN Security Council.

He suggested that a deal to remove unilateral restrictive measures could be initiated by the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) before receiving support from the G20 countries and then certified by the UN Security Council.

The primary global instigator of sanctions is the United States, and use of these punitive measures has sharply increased during Donald Trump's presidency. The Economist has described the practice as "financial carpet-bombing" while the Financial Times labels them "a new way of war," saying Trump "has merged America’s economic policy with its security strategy."

There are currently six countries under severe, or near total, embargoes from Washington: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Venezuela. China and Russia are among the other nations have been targeted with specific sanctions.

Meanwhile, even long-time US ally Germany got a taste of the medicine recently when Trump went after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline it has been trying to build together with Russia. Many in Moscow and Berlin claimed Washington made the move in an attempt to gain market share for its Liquified Natural Gas, which is more expensive than the alternative Russian product. 

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