Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov says a global flight away from the US dollar is now irreversible and set to accelerate.
According to a report by TASS, a Russian-state-funded news organization, Lavrov said at a press conference that many nations are essentially ignoring sanctions and threats from the US and Western Europe, expanding their economies and trade networks on their own accord.
Lavrov says that CIS (Common Wealth of Independent States), or countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, have already grown their trade flows by a sizeable chunk without complying with the US’ demands.
“We are starting to see a flight from the dollar. So far, it is not all that swift, but it is sure to accelerate. In fact, this trend is irreversible. The US has already, for real, sawed off the tree limb that it was perched on, managing global financial flows and the world economy as a whole by leveraging the dollar’s dominant role…
Despite the threats that our partners have received from the US and the European Union not to cooperate with the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus under pain of so-called secondary sanctions and other penalties, trade flows across the CIS are growing. [Trade] edged up by more than six percent last year, amounting to over $100 bln.”
Lavrov, who was appointed by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2004, says that CIS countries are already working toward further agreements that will “give an impetus for further expansion of economic interaction,” according to TASS.
He also says that “serious” countries are working towards becoming independent of the West’s financial hegemony.
“The path of sanctions is the path to nowhere. Serious countries [and] sober-minded politicians are drawing relevant conclusions and these conclusions are definitely in favor of terminating dependence on the West.”
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