Russia to make decisions on possible restrictions of uranium, titanium, nickel exports carefully - Kremlin

MOSCOW. Sept 16 (Interfax) - Decisions in relation to possible restrictions of supplies of Russian uranium, titanium and nickel to the global market will be made carefully to avoid losing positions on the competitive market, among other things, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

"I would like to reiterate, all these decisions, of course, will be made very carefully, because the market is quite competitive and merciless, and having lost positions on it once, it would take decades to regain them somehow," Peskov said in an interview with Pavel Zarubin, the creator and host of the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin television program on the Rossiya 1 (VGTRK) TV channel.

"Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum left after our diamonds, if we leave, would be taken by others, and the vacuum left after our oil would be taken by other oil, and so on. And this is why, of course, we need to work energetically on global markets so that we maintain our positions, despite these illegal restrictions," Peskov said.

No one will act to the detriment of Russia, while considering the idea of limiting supplies, and the Russian president spoke about it, he said.

"Firstly, we need to respond to what I would not call it even unfriendly, but thuggish actions targeting us. And secondly, as the practice showed, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When we resorted to imposing the food embargo, when we cut off supplies of western food products, it was, of course, risky, but ultimately, we are stating ten years after that we have full replaced the entire range with our own food products," Peskov said.

Such decision sometimes have quite a favorable impact on encouraging the industry to the full and high-tech import substitution, he said.

Answering a question as to whether unfriendly countries continue to buy Russian goods on which they imposed supply restrictions themselves, Peskov said, "International markets are a very complicated mechanism, which categorically refuses to abandon any components, and when one side imposes sanctions, it does not mean that the market would automatically close some doors before goods of this [sanctioned] country. There are ways, there are paths, there are chains for supplies, logistic chains, and goods still reach the global market. Another thing is that expenses are growing, prices are growing, and it leads to an imbalance of the global markets."

In other words, sanctions have a negative impact on the global economy overall, he said.