Women choose Dutch tomatoes at a supermarket in downtown Moscow on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014. The Russian government has banned all imports of meat, fish, milk and milk products and fruit and vegetables from the United States, the European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway since August, 2014. (AP File Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
MOSCOW, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday that Moscow believed the recent extension of economic sanctions against it by the European Union (EU) was a continuation of Brussels' "short-sighted" policy.
Earlier in the day, the EU announced the prolongation of the economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy until Jan. 31, 2017.
The sanctions were first imposed over Russia's annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Ukraine crisis in 2014, and later extended due to the lack of implementation of the Minsk agreements aimed to facilitate a peaceful settlement of the crisis, which Moscow has repeatedly denied.
In response, Russia imposed a year-long embargo on food imports from Western countries in August 2014, and extended the anti-sanction measures for one more year in June 2015.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to extend embargo on food imports from the EU and other countries
The ministry said that the sanctions hit both sides, as trade turnover between them fell by 40 percent in 2015 from the previous year and the trend continued this year.
By cutting its financial, economic and technological dependence on the EU, Russia has been struggling to adapt to the regime of restrictive measures, while the EU now risks "permanently losing a number of important segments of the Russian market," the ministry said.
The Russian side urged Brussels to abandon "the logic of confrontation and containment" to reach a "qualitatively new level of cooperation with Russia."
