Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party leader:
I listened to Obama's speech in detail and I must say that he has taken 4 steps back. 
First, he recognized that Crimea is a Russian territory and that there is no sense in doing anything. 
Secondly, he said that economic sanctions in particular might also hurt the economies of the West and the United States. 
Perhaps, the economy of the U.S. to a lesser extent, but the West has a nearly 400 billion trade turnover with us. 
I listened to Merkel's speech carefully, and she is overall strongly against additional sanctions, particularly economic ones. 
In Germany, hundreds, thousands of businesses are working directly with us 
and it is unreasonable to introduce additional sanctions given the global financial and economic crisis. 
It will hurt their economy as well. 
Almost all of Europe agrees with it, so I suppose that they will make some noise, show how upset they are and leave it at that.
And we must remember that globalization has happened in a good sense. 
Many economies are so intertwined that they totally depend on each other, 
that Russia has the opportunity to develop its relations with both the West and the East. 
We are dynamically developing relations with Communist China. 
I have an upcoming visit and meetings there at the invitation of Xi Jinping, and we are actively developing these relations. 
We have sent there a group of talented young MPs, experienced journalists, and interesting party leaders. 
They have accomplished an excellent training there in the last two years, 
more than 200 talented young people and managers have been educated there. 
We are learning from the European, Chinese and Japanese experiences as well as experiences of many other countries. 
I assure you that sanctions are counterproductive. 
By the way, many people in the West, I looked through the survey, 
say that the stiffening and toughening of economic sanctions 
might cease the already very slow recovery process of the European and U.S. economies. 
And sanctions can always have an unhappy ending for everyone.
