MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) – The new batch of sanctions against Russia announced Monday by the United States and the European Union will not hit hard on Russia, Eric Kraus, Director at Principal Asset Management and keen observer of the Russian and world politics, told the Voice of Russia radio station Monday.

“These are another round of pseudo-sanctions. For the Americans they can sanction Russia with relative impunity because they don’t really have much in cash flows. For the EU Russia is critically important and they simply are not getting the cooperation they want to,” the expert said.

The European Union has made a decision to sanction additional 15 Russian officials accused of allegedly undermining democracy and inciting violence in Ukraine, bringing the total number in the blacklist to 48.

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“Basically warfare is no longer carried out with cyber planes and tanks. It is carried out with banking systems, cash flows. They can’t really go to war with Russia. So, they are doing what they can to cause damage. Mr. Putin has made it very clear that Russia has got to regain her economic independence. They have to squeeze out Visa and Master Card who make about 3-4 billion dollars a year in Russia and who are screaming at present as they are going to lose this market. They’ve got to force out the American banks and they’ve got to become far less dependent on Western investment flows, cash flows and turn towards China, turn towards Korea, turn towards India, towards Asia, which is basically where all of the future economic growth is going to be anyway,” Kraus stressed.