ISTANBUL

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said a total of more than 28,000 sanctions have been imposed by the West on Moscow.

“The Finance Ministry has counted, and I can tell you for sure ... (that) 28,595 sanctions against individuals and legal entities,” Putin said in an address to the 34th congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs held in Moscow.

It seems that those imposing the sanctions have “lost count of how many restrictions they have imposed and against whom,” Putin said, adding that this figure is more than the total number of “all the sanctions against all countries” in the world.

Putin defined sanctions not as "temporary or targeted" measures, but rather as “a mechanism of systemic strategic pressure” against Russia.

“And no matter how the situation develops, no matter what the system of international relations is, our competitors will always strive to contain our country, to weaken its economic and technological capabilities,” Putin further said.

He also said the West is no longer going to be “embarrassed,” and that it will rather threaten new sanctions and “stamp out these packages one after another.”

“Even if there is some kind of gesture from the other side that they are planning to remove or weaken something, one can expect that another way will be found to put pressure on us, to put some kind of spokes in our wheels,” he went on to say.

Despite facing serious challenges in recent years, Russian businesses have learned to work under sanctions and have adapted to them, Putin added.

"In addition, sanctions have become a kind of even additional catalyst for positive structural changes in our economy, including in the financial, technological sphere, and in many other key areas," he said.