With
the crisis in Ukraine showing signs of subsiding, Germany has started mending
fences with Russia and western companies are doing business with Moscow,
sanctions or no sanctions, a Czech magazine wrote on Tuesday.
Apparently
buoyed by the outcome of the recent Normandy Four meeting
in Berlin, Germany now notesat the “considerable progress” achieved
on a number of “critical issues” but it is the issue of gas
deliveries, not Ukraine, that is at the core of Berlin’s changing
attitude towards Moscow, Literarni noviny magazine wrote.
During the recent Eastern Economic Forum
in Vladivostok, Russia and its European partners agreed to their
stakes in the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline to Germany, which bypasses
Ukraine.
In the end, Gazprom inked several major deals
with Austria’s OMV and Germany’s Wintershall companies.
“What we now see is that the western companies,
above all German, are already ignoring the anti-Russian sanctions because
they know they will not be punished for that, and that the sanctions won’t
last long,” the magazine noted.
This means that all the talk about the need
to make Europe less dependent on fuel supplies from Russia was
nothing but hot air and that this interdependence keeps growing.
As for the EU’s decision to extend its
sanctions against Russia for another six months, this is just an
attempt to save face, the author wrote.
Some politicians believe that the Ukrainian crisis has
been put on the back burner by the current migrant crisis in
Europe. The author does not think so.
“Newsweek put the most accurate tag on this whole
situation in a article headlined: “Forget Ukraine. It's Business As Usual
Between Europe and Russia,” Literarni noviny wrote in conclusion.
Source: Sputnik News 23-09-2015
