... dialogue about Syria, hoping that its membership in NATO might turn it against Russia. Voices from both the USA and Russia recognize that the common threat is the expansion of ISIS. Athens could be a normalizing power between NATO and Russia.
Economic Sanctions and the EU
EPA / ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO
Yuri Kvashnin:
Tsipras’s Visit to Moscow and Reset of Russian–
Greek Relations
The EU should search for tools to communicate with Russia and put an end to the deterioration of EU-Russian ...
The quality of the commercial cooperation between Russian and Western European companies in the energy sector has remained significant, despite the sanctions regime. Strong economic rationale seems to prevail over politics. The German-Russian relations have been the most prominent in the region and have long-existed under the mutual awareness of interdependence. This perceived paradigm has led to ...
The Yamal LNG project has recently demonstrated that Russia’s eastward pivot may in fact provide a solution to the financial constrains, imposed as a result of the Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. Russian, French and Chinese investors have found a way to guarantee the completion of the Yamal LNG project, despite Washington’s eagerness to halt Russian energy companies from developing the ...
... peninsula with Moscow. The last initiative made by the European establishment against the Russian Federation reaffirmed, once again, the deteriorated status of bilateral relations between the Kremlin and Brussels, aggravated by the long lasting adoption of sanctions and counter-sanctions. The European message is clear: the dialogue with Russia, for now frozen, will only be reopened in case of return of Crimea to Ukraine, an option that currently seems extremely far from reality. If the EU’s position ...
... METRO Group and UniCredit S.p.A. took place in Berlin on 18–19 April.
The forum was initially established as a platform for politicians and businessmen to discuss the prospects of the space “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. Despite all the sanctions and counter-sanctions, the more than 40% plunge in trade between Russia and the EU in 2015, the harsh rhetoric coming from Poland, the Baltic nations and a number of other Eastern European countries as regards cooperation with Russia, there ...
... allowed Moscow to take a benign view on mounting political problems with Brussels— these problems were perceived as negligible or, at least, affordable compared to fundamental reciprocal economic interests.
The Ukrainian crisis and the subsequent EU sanctions against Russia proved this perception wrong. Of course, in Moscow the European decision on sanctions was interpreted as caused by the US pressure, but there are reasons to believe that the Russian side had expected EU countries to resist this ...
The issue of anti-Russian sanctions is not the subject of Russia’s negotiations with the European Union, Russian EU Ambassador Vladimir Chizhov said in an interview with the Izvestia daily.
"I would not like to speak about the future of sanctions, all the more to guess ...
Big Business – Serious Consequences
On February 23, 2016 the European General Court (EGC) in Luxembourg started hearings in the so-called sanctions case of Russia’s OJSC Rosneft against the EU Council. What role does this case play in the EU’s system for sanctions policy? When and why was the lawsuit filed? What are the prospects for its consideration amidst the sanctions war ...
... Council (RIAC), thinks that greater cooperation between Russia and Western powers is possible in Syria and that the Russian people, like its counterparts, is wondering why a large joint anti-terrorist coalition doesn’t exist. Western economic sanctions have been counter-productive since they failed to change Russia’s position in Ukraine and to erode President Putin’s popularity at home. It’s also up to Kyiv to comply fully with the Minsk agreements, explained Kortunov. Finally,...
... weaker demand of Russian importers. There is evidence that EU companies have started feeling insecure about political and economic perspectives of trade with Russia, fearing to violate, possibly involuntarily, certain intricate aspects of the so-called sanctions, perhaps even not the EU ones but those imposed by the US. Mostly renowned, experienced partners have stayed, whose economic stakes in Russia were too high.
Summing up: deterioration of political climate has led to contraction of economic turnover ...