INTERVIEW: Germany expects Russia to return to G8 – ambassador

MOSCOW, Feb 11 (PRIME) -- Germany hopes that Russia will return to the Group of Eight (G8) as a result of normalization of relations, ambassador Rudiger von Fritsch said in an interview to PRIME Thursday.

“Of course, we hope that will happen,” he said. Germany expects that “one day we will once again sit as partners in the framework of the Group of Eight and use it as a forum to dialogue on important international issues.”

Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, Germany has been working together with its partners to solve the problem through negotiations. “I think we’ve achieved some results here. Restoration of normal mutual relations should be the ultimate result here, so we are able to find ourselves around the Group of Eight’s table of negotiations once again,” he said.

But Germany is ready to accept the damage from sanctions imposed on Russia. “These sanctions became a sign of the fact that we see the principles that have been violated as unbreakable, and we are ready to accept certain negative consequences… to comply with the principles,” he said.

He said that the goal of the sanctions was to change Russia’s behavior and prevent it from “expansion of these actions.”

As soon as the Minsk agreements are reached, the sanctions will be voided. “There is a strict decision of the European Union here. We are very actively working to reach the goal and we hope to reach it,” he said.

Western Europe is interested in long-term purchases of energy from Russia. “The Nord Stream-2 project is commercial. We have two partners here – Gazprom and a consortium of European companies – who united to implement the project. All of us in Western Europe are interested in long-term and reliably grounded cooperation with Russia in the energy sphere and in purchases of Russian energy sources,” he said.

In September 2015, Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a shareholder agreement on the 55-billion-cubic-meter Nord Stream-2 pipeline, which encompasses laying two more lines of the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea to the shore of Germany, with Germany’s E.ON and BASF/Wintershall, Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV, and France’s Engie.

But Germany is also positive toward Russia’s decision to prolong natural gas transit through Ukraine after current contract expires in 2019.

“It is good and right from the viewpoint of security to have different lines and supply routes of energy sources. We should also name supplies through Ukraine here,” he said, adding that “it is very good that the Russian side has said recently that there is an intention to continue this transit through Ukraine.”

German business is very interested in possibilities of the Russian market. “If we compare figures of direct investment for last year, direct investment of Germany in Russia exceeded direct investments of China in Russia by several times,” he said.

About 5,500 companies with direct participation of German money are operating in Russia now, he said.

“Last year, several German groups of companies with well-known names launched their plants in Russia – Volkswagen, Claas, Gildemeister, and Bosch. All these companies opened their production in Russia. This means they follow the principle of localization.”

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