While Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Kiev that if it makes use of the army against its own people, there will be consequences, he also stresses that the Western sanctions against his country are not critical.

Of course, he explained, speaking at a forum in St. Petersburg, that sanctions are “not a good thing”.

In addition, as the Voice of Russia reports, Putin stated that Russian authorities do not intend to punish credit systems Visa or MasterCard but added that “their reliability has dropped”, and estimated that they will lose ground in markets.

Additionally, just last month, Visa and MasterCard  stopped providing services for payments and transactions through credit cards to customers of Rossiya (Russian Commercial Bank) bank and other banks of Russia.

A few days ago, however, the Russian president had sent a stern message to the West, stressing that if the Russians are excluded from Visa or MasterCard, it will backfire on them greatly.