On April 6, the number of attempts to pressure Russia through sanctions topped fifty. Despite the failure of previous rounds of sanctions to achieve anything, Washington continues to threaten Russians with visa denials and to scare Russian business by freezing property and financial assets, forgetting that the seizure of private property and other people’s money constitutes theft.

Having failed to achieve the desired effect from the previous sanctions, Washington politicians are pursuing absurd policies. They are lashing out at our companies that have maintained business ties with the United States for a long time and on which thousands of jobs depend there. In other words, they are hurting average Americans, their own voters, and destroying economic cooperation to their own detriment.

It seems that we are witnessing America’s decline in real time. The United States is increasingly turning its back on what it used to characterise as fundamental “American values.” Also, the seizure of Russian diplomatic property by force is not only a crude violation of international norms. It also shows that property rights, which Americans once considered sacred, are now meaningless in that country.

By endlessly turning to sanctions, particularly to remove competitors from foreign markets by administrative methods, Washington has actually become an opponent of the market economy and free and honest competition. Obstacles to the broadcasting of the Russian television channel RT speak to a desire to eliminate a source of alternative information and restrict freedom of speech. Finally, there are the practices of medieval torture in the early 21st century and keeping prisoners in the legal vacuum at the Guantanamo Bay military base and CIA secret prisons, which testifies to Washington’s attitude to human rights.

American democracy is obviously in decline. The US simply hopes to maintain its global hegemony by all means, in particular, by exerting pressure on countries that pursue independent policies and express opinions that are at odds with those of Washington’s NATO allies.

As we have noted repeatedly, no pressure will divert Russia from its course. It merely reveals the inability of the US to achieve its goals and helps to rally Russian society.

Needless to say, this latest anti-Russian move will not go unanswered. However, above all we wish to advise Washington to disabuse itself of the illusion that it is possible to speak to us in the language of sanctions.