He wrote in his Telegram channel on Friday that unlawful sanctions always cause a degradation of the international law system, TASS reported.

“The current unprecedented in breadth, scope and degree of cynicism measures of illegal influence will cause further collapse of all international institutions, including above all the UN, and a total disregard for the norms of international law,” the deputy chairman of the Security Council pointed out.

According to him, on Thursday, in particular, a similar thing happened to the UN Human Rights Council, “it lost its legitimacy for Russia”.

“Diplomatic relations will also come to a complete standstill, their level with a number of states will be lowered or there will be a complete breakdown,” Medvedev concluded.

In general, the deputy chairman of the Security Council noted that sanctions have been discussed “an endless number of times” recently, while “enemy countries keep imposing them against Russia”.

In this regard, Medvedev pointed out that he decided to recall “some fundamental moments of the sanctions epic”.

“Sanctions are coercive measures taken by the UN Security Council on the basis of Article 41 of the UN Charter against the offending state. I would like to emphasize specifically: there is no other way to adopt them. Everything else is reprisals, which are not internationally recognized, they are not sanctions in the sense of international law,” he explained.

“Consequently, everything that has been done almost a thousand times recently against Russia is a direct violation of the rights of the Russian Federation as a sovereign state by individual countries or their alliances. Thus, Russia is now under illegal sanctions by a number of countries,” Medvedev concluded.

Medvedev believes that anti-Russian sanctions can be regarded as an act of aggression. In this case, Moscow has the right to self-defense, which it is free to use.

“The whole combination of the legal and political circumstances prompts the conclusion that sanctions in the current situation can be qualified as an act of aggression against Russia and a form of hybrid war,” Medvedev wrote.

“In this case, the country that has been subjected to aggression, in other words, Russia, has the right to individual and collective defense within the framework of national legislation and international law. Nobody should feel any doubts that Russia will use this right in a way and to the extent it will find appropriate,” he added.

Medvedev stressed that “illegal sanctions under certain circumstances may be qualified as an act of aggression by certain countries or their alliances”.

“In the first place, when they are aimed at undermining economic independence, and, consequently, state sovereignty, which endangers the very existence of the state. As a matter of fact, as our opponents say, it is a declaration of economic war,” he explained.