© UnknownGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel
The West has not yet reached a stage where it will be ready to impose economic sanctions on Russia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, stressing that she hopes for a political solution to the stalemate over Ukraine crisis.
The chancellor said she is
"not interested in escalation" of tensions with Russia, speaking after Wednesday meeting with the South Korean president in Berlin.
"On the contrary, I am working on de-escalation of the situation," she added, as cited by Itar-Tass.
Merkel believes that the West
"has not reached a stage that implies the imposition of economic sanctions" against Russia, advocated by US President Barack Obama.
"And I hope we will be able to avoid it," she said.
Berlin is very much dependent on economic ties with Russia with bilateral trade volume equaling to some 76 billion euros in 2013. Further around
6,000 German firms and over 300,000 jobs are dependent on Russian partners with the overall investment volume of 20 billion euros.
Germany is currently the European Union's biggest exporter to Russia. German car manufacturing companies are likely to suffer first if sanctions against Russia become more substantial, as about half of German exports to Russia are vehicles and machinery.
Comment: This comes on the heels of another rather cringe-worthy moment yesterday, March 26th 2014, when a room full of international journalists and European diplomats responded to Obama's resounding reaffirmation of the USA's apocryphal principles of "privacy, rule of law and individual rights", with....well...complete silence.
Obama also claimed today that "Russia is completely isolated".
In his 'reality-creating' reality, perhaps.
In the real world, it's the United States that is fast becoming isolated as the world collectively watches its implosion.
The reason why no one applauded was because Obama said that America's values were "PRIVACY" (NSA wiretapping of everyone), "RULE OF LAW" (illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq, and drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere), "INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS" (meaning the ones the PATRIOT act took away).
That's something to laugh at, not applaud. In fact, the only reason his nonsense wasn't met with raucous laughter was probably because the audience's collective jaw was sitting on the floor, making it hard to laugh.