MOSCOW, September 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Introduction of sanctions against Russia is a strategic error and a gross miscalculation on the part of the EU, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Thursday in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV news channel.

“It’s not so much the defense manufacturing sector that they are punishing,” he said. “They’re trying to punish the whole nation because the sanctions against the financial sector, the manufacturing sector, the oil and gas sector are the sanctions aimed at damaging the life of ordinary Russians.”

“They (those who conceived these sanctions) want to stir mass grievances over the policies of the president (Vladimir Putin), over the reunification with Crimea - with our own kith and kin, our compatriots,” Rogozin said.

“They think they can sting us somehow this way because the sanctions against the defense manufacturing industries signal an attempt to enfeeble us physically and I think that’s a strategic error on the part of the West,” he said.