The US “with its own hands” pushed the countries, which are not participating in “sanctions wars”, to form a “new Big Eight” group with Russia, the Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday.

Moscow, 11th June 2022: The US “with its own hands” pushed the countries, which are not participating in “sanctions wars”, to form a “new Big Eight” group with Russia, the Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday.

In a Telegram post, Volodin included a table with IMF data on GDP based on purchasing power parity of countries he calls the “new G8” and of countries forming the current G7 (after Russia’s participation in the bloc was suspended over Crimea’s vote to join the country in 2014, the G8 effectively turned into the G7), RT reported.

“The group of eight countries not participating in the sanctions wars — China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, Turkey — in terms of GDP at PPP is 24.4 per cent ahead of the old group,” Volodin wrote, RT reported.

In his opinion, the economies of the G7 members — the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada — continue “to crack under the weight of sanctions imposed against Russia”.

Following the launch of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine in late February, the US, EU, UK and many other countries imposed hard-hitting restrictions on Moscow, making Russia the most sanctioned country in the world.

“The rupture of existing economic relations by Washington and its allies has led to the formation of new points of growth in the world,” Volodin claimed.

While having serious economic difficulties, the US, according to the Duma speaker, continues “doing everything to solve their problems at the expense of others”.

Creating tensions will “inevitably” lead the US to lose its world domination, Volodin stressed, RT reported.

“The US created the conditions with its own hands for countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations to actually form a ‘new Big Eight’ together with Russia,” he said.