Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has hurt the Mongolian economy, its prime minister has said, claiming financial damage including the loss of airline revenues and difficulty in importing necessary supplies from Russia.

Almost a year on from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent imposition of wide-ranging sanctions by the US and its allies on Moscow, the landlocked democracy of just 3.3mn people sandwiched between Russia and China is still reeling from the impact.

“Even though Mongolia is a democratic country it is also under pressure because of the sanctions imposed on Russia,” Luvsannamsrai Oyun-Erdene, the country’s 42-year-old prime minister, told the Financial Times in an interview. He added that the punitive measures amounted to “a double sanction on Mongolia even though it is not our fault”.