KLIMOVSK, Russia. March 17 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin claimed on Friday that Russia's defense industry has sufficient domestic resources not to be seriously affected by sanctions that the West is threatening Russia with because of Moscow's Ukrainian policy.
"We have done a great deal recently in the way of import replacement, in the way of reviving our own Russian defense industry complex, and so we're not afraid of any sanctions today. It's actually those who are trying to initiate them today that should be afraid of them," Rogozin told reporters.
"At a time of economic crisis, flexing pseudo-muscle in the form of sanctions is a very dangerous, and even criminal, game, and so we are not talking about any retaliatory measures," he said.
Rogozin said Russia's war industry would need some extra efforts to cope with sanctions but that nullifying their potential effects would take months rather than years.
"We will cope anyway, and maybe it will even force our industry to perform better at such a tense moment," he said. "Russian industry is ready for hard trials."
"We will make a careful study of all that Brussels announces on Monday next week. We'll look at that and report it to our leadership," the deputy premier said.
"On the whole, all necessary measures have been taken to fend off this threat, these risks. We, for our part, won't threaten any retaliatory sanctions," Rogozin said.
"It's too early to speak of personified sanctions," he said when asked whether he risked ending up a personal sanctions list.