Putin said that Russian companies can work “quietly” in Crimea

Russian President Vladimir Putin assured on Thursday that massive sanctions against Moscow allow Ukrainian companies to “quietly” settle in the annexed Ukrainian Crimea.

“Large Russian organizations that were afraid of sanctions now have nothing to fear. They can calmly come to the peninsula, especially banks, to work actively in the region.” Putin declared.

He added that “restrictions on Russia cause numerous problems” at a government meeting on the economic situation in Crimea eight years after Moscow's annexation.

After this annexation, the first train of Western sanctions against Moscow followed, several leading Russian organizations refused to invest in Crimea for fear of being sanctioned.

However, in retaliation for Russian military intervention against Ukraine, which began on February 24, Westerners adopted new sanctions of a historical scale against a number of Russian companies.

These sanctions not only paralyzed part of the country's banking and financial system and provoked inflation, but also caused the collapse of the ruble.

In the face of these sanctions, Putin promised on Wednesday not only to retire, but also to raise “significant minimum wages, civil servant salaries” in order to overcome the “lightning war” for the Western economy.

Bour/ia/me/miss