“The West’s attempts to blame others and promote a spiral of unilateral sanctions will cause inflation in their own countries and what is worse, a global recession,” the diplomat explained in a forum on the sustainable development goals.

Vershinin stressed that errors in the macroeconomic, food and energy policies of the largest Western economies during the Covid-19 pandemic led to a wave of instability in global commodity markets already before the start of the special operation carried out by Russia in Ukraine.

The official also argued that, despite attempts to suffocate and isolate Russia from the rest of the world, Moscow is committed to increasing its food and fertilizer exports to nations in Africa and the Middle East.

“Russia, as a responsible supplier, has sufficient capacity to increase food and fertilizer exports to African countries and the Middle East region, to contribute to the solution of the hunger problem,” Vershinin said.

Regarding the stability of energy markets, the minister stressed that Russia had proposed forms of payment that circumvent the sanctions, and gave the example of the use of national currencies to pay sovereign debts.

“However, the crisis, being structural by nature, requires the reorganization of the entire international economic structure,” he said.

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