West Needs Trade With Russia More Than It Needs Ukraine – Czech Media

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.