Moscow is calling on the European Union to lift the anti-Russian sanctions and blacklists and vows to scrap its own blacklists and countermeasures in response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said.

"We don't expect anything from our European partners. The only thing we expect is that they should stop the senseless sanction spiral and follow the way of cancelling the sanctions and blacklists, which would in turn enable us to repeal our lists. This would also prompt us to revoke the countermeasures we have introduced," Meshkov said in an interview with Interfax.

Any sanctions "cause damage not only to those against whom they are targeted but also to those who impose them," Meshkov said.

"In our view, the number of EU countries in which the understanding is growing that the various anti-Russian sanctions are detrimental to the European Union itself is increasing," he said.

The full version of Meshkov's interview will be available later on www.interfax.ru.