Mexico Nixes Russia Sanctions to Keep ‘Good Relations’
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
Mexico has declined to impose any economic sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, the country’s president said in a news conference Tuesday. “We are not going to take any sort of economic reprisal because we want to have good relations with all the governments in the world,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said. “We do not consider that it corresponds to us, and we think that the best thing to do is to promote dialogue to achieve peace.” The leader also condemned the “censorship” of Russian state media from platforms like Google and Facebook, after the social networks’ companies announced they would take steps to limit state-backed channels like RT.com. Mexico’s policy departs sharply from the stance taken by many other countries in response to the Ukraine invasion. Several hit Russia with fresh sanctions and injunctions over the weekend, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, and Taiwan. The U.S., the E.U., the U.K., and Canada all banned a number of Russian banks from SWIFT on Saturday.