EU Leaders Set To Prolong Russia Sanctions Again

[pinto + 293]

European Union leaders will next week extend until the end of January economic sanctions against Russia over its intervention in Ukraine, diplomats and officials said. The curbs on Russia’s energy, defense and financial sectors have been prolonged every six months since first being slapped mid-2014 after Moscow annexed the peninsula of Crimea from Kiev and backed rebels fighting government troops in east Ukraine. EU leaders meeting in Brussels on June 28-29 will agree another six-month extension of the curbs on doing business with Russia currently in place until the end of July.

[Petar + 76]

If sanctions go on for some years the chance increases that Russia's dependence to the rest of the world will reach a minimum. No need to lift sanctions then, but Europe continues to pay the price....

[Pavel + 384]

It is a good thing that the sanctions are renewed for an additional 6 months. But it is too little. Don’t you see that Putin could not care less. Go deeper. Sanction any business with Putin’s Mafia!

[damirUSBiH + 327]

It seems to me that people in Russia are completely brainwashed and I can't believe it is happening in the time of internet. Big changes are inevitable. The only question is when and at what cost.

[jpZelabal + 63]

And what about Nord Stream II?

[Tomasz + 1,608]

7 hours ago, damirUSBiH said:

It seems to me that people in Russia are completely brainwashed and I can't believe it is happening in the time of internet. Big changes are inevitable. The only question is when and at what cost.

The are not brainwashed at all I can assure you. 

They just clearly see NATo and USA encircling Russia for years and cynically breaking the agreement made with Gorbachov. I remind you that there were assured that after West Germany unite with East Germany there will be no NATO expansion on the east. And there will a economic help for Russia.

At the end there was no economic help only crooks like Bowder and there was a huge NATO expansion on the east.

So how a sensible Russian citizen can believe any western news after that.

And also because NATO after Yugoslavia Libya Iraq and Syria is clearly no longer only a defensive pact.

 

 

Once Bismarck said

Do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russian has always come for their money. And when they come - do not rely on an agreement signed by you, you are supposed to justify. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russian is to play fair, or do not play.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

 

But he was German. So maybe Solzenitsyn

In 2006, Solzhenitsyn accused NATO of trying to bring Russia under its control; he claimed this was visual because of its "ideological support for the 'colour revolutions' and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia".^[90] In a 2006 interview with Der Spiegel he stated "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc."^[87]

 

Solzhenitsyn: I can name many reasons, but the most interesting ones are psychological, i.e. the clash of illusory hopes against reality. This happened both in Russia and in West. When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

This mood started changing with the cruel NATO bombings of Serbia. Its fair to say that all layers of Russian society were deeply and indelibly shocked by those bombings. The situation then became worse when NATO started to spread its influence and draw the ex-Soviet republics into its structure. This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc.

So, the perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

At the same time the West was enjoying its victory after the exhausting Cold War, and observing the 15-year-long anarchy under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. In this context it was easy to get accustomed to the idea that Russia had become almost a Third World country and would remain so forever. When Russia started to regain some of its strength as an economy and as a state, the Wests reaction -- perhaps a subconscious one, based on erstwhile fears -- was panic.

SPIEGEL: How do you assess the period of Putins governance in comparison with his predecessors Yeltsin and Gorbachev?

Solzhenitsyn: Gorbachevs administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Gorbachev, and not Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of our country.

Yeltsins period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to peoples lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This, of course, deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community. All this met with even more hearty Western applause.

Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible -- a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

https://www.unz.com/akarlin/when-russians-were-americanophiles/

Edited June 22, 2018 by Tomasz