US angry about Russian bridge to Crimea: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Fred Weir, a journalist and political commentator from Moscow, about new round of US sanctions against Russia.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Russia has nonchalantly shrugged off the new US sanctions against it. Walk us through the comments made by the deputy prime minister of Russia.

Weir: These are new sanctions pertaining to the bridge that Russia is building from mainland Russia to Kerch in Crimea. The Crimean Peninsula, which has been annexed to Russia and is the original source of most of these sanctions is now virtually an island because all of its road, rail, water, and electricity connections were through Ukraine and they’re now effectively cut.

And so Russia is building a big bridge across the four kilometers of the Kerch Strait. And when that bridge is finished in a couple of years it will provide full road, rail and other communications, water, gas and so on directly from Russia to Crimea and Crimea will effectively then be cemented to Russia and all of its contacts with Ukraine broke off. That is the background.

And there doesn’t seem to be any reason for these new sanctions other than the frustration in Kiev and, I guess, Washington over the fact that this bridge is now well underway, the construction is going on and they feel they have to make a point about it. I’m not sure what the rationality is, but indeed the sanctions won’t make a lot of difference because most of the companies and individuals who are the subject of these new sanctions were the subject of the previous round of sanctions.

So, there is very little new. There’s some new construction companies and so on that will be included but they have already said that they have all the resources they need, all the capital they require to finish the completion of this bridge. So, that’s where it stands the United States was apparently chose this day to make this point but I can’t see any new Russian outrage or anything that has occasioned it.

Press TV: How much longer we’re going to see this political back and forth between Russia on one side and the United States and Europe on the other hand?

Weir: Oh, I don’t know the answer of that. I think it’s just beginning. I’m afraid. I’m very pessimistic about this. There is a rupture, that’s ongoing, especially between the United States and Russia. Europe may back down a better change it stands in the coming year on the separate grounds of sanctions that were European sanctions. I mean they also imposed sanctions over Crimea, but they did not join the United States in this new round today. So, but with the United States and Russia I’m afraid that the deterioration will continue.

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