Putin Pushes For Sanctions-Free Trade Corridors Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Thursday to create "green corridors" for trade and impose a "moratorium" on curbs on the flows of essential goods in order to secure supply chains amid the coronavirus pandemic

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th March, 2020) Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Thursday to create "green corridors" for trade and impose a "moratorium" on curbs on the flows of essential goods in order to secure supply chains amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"It is important to create so-called green corridors that will be free from trade wars and sanctions while the crisis lasts in order to safeguard trade in medicines, food, equipment and technologies," Putin said in a speech at a G20 summit published on the Kremlin website.

"Ideally, we should agree a moratorium on restrictions on trade in basic goods and financial transactions related to their purchases, particularly by countries that have been hit the hardest by this pandemic.

At the end of the day, it is human lives we are talking about, it is a purely humanitarian issue that should not be politicized," Putin said.

Putin predicted that the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic would be worse than the 2008 financial crisis and warned that trade rows and sanctions would only exacerbate the global recession.

"We consider long-term unemployment as the key risk. Under any scenario, its peak will exceed the figures seen in 2009. Unemployment dynamics will be the main indicator of how efficient our anti-crisis measures are," he said.