Amid Threat Of World Sanctions, Putin Holds Meeting With Russian Business Community

President Vladimir Putin (Photo via Kremlin)

JAKARTA - European Union countries are trying to impose sanctions on Russia for the full-scale operation launched by President Vladimir Putin. Even Britain promised the heaviest 'beat' for Russia through the economic sector.

Quoted from The Guardian, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced the approval of massive and targeted sanctions against Russia.

First, the package includes financial sanctions, targeting 70 percent of the Russian banking market and major state-owned enterprises, including in the defense sector.

The EU will also target the energy sector, a key economic area that specifically benefits the Russian state. The export ban is believed to hit the oil sector by making it impossible for Russia to upgrade its refineries.

Thursday, February 24, Russian time, Putin held a meeting with representatives of the Russian business community.

"Unfortunately, our meeting took place under unusual conditions, to put it mildly, but we planned it", Putin said on the official website of the Russian presidency.

President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Alexander Shokhin, said the situation at hand was indeed difficult. But Shokhin told Putin that Russia had learned a lot to survive in a crisis.

The situation of Putin's meeting with the Russian Business Community (Photo via Kremlin)

"Since 2014, our business has learned to adapt to crisis phenomena and even to complete development goals", said Shokhin.

"We are working together to design anti-crisis measures and systemic measures to improve the business and investment climate", he continued.

Russian businessmen are aware that official sanctions are imposed, and are sure to be tougher than previous restrictions. The sanctions will affect the financial sector, the extractive sector, the delivery of technology equipment.

"Obviously, to dampen the effects of all these restrictions, Russian businesses, Russian companies must work harder and more effectively to ensure the continuity of their companies' operations without layoffs, panic buying, or price hikes", he said.

Effect to Indonesia

Indonesia is known to have quite good diplomatic relations with Russia and Ukraine. Now, the two countries are in open military conflict.

As a friendly country, Indonesia is deemed necessary to ensure that the pair of thousand countries remain at peace, at least to secure Indonesia's economic interests.

Citing data reported by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), it is known that Russia is one of the important trading partners. This is reflected in the trade balance surplus of 240 million US dollars throughout 2021.

This figure was obtained from the export value of 1.49 billion US dollars compared to imports of 1.25 billion US dollars.

Meanwhile, Indonesia's mainstay commodities for export to Russia include animal fats and oils, food, clothing, and spices. Meanwhile, imports consist of mineral fuels and aircraft components.