The US is keen to keep imposing new sanctions on Russia ad infinitum, and German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned that there are forces in the European Union who are keen to do the same to “cripple Russia.”
With the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine holding, Germany and France are both increasingly pushing back against those sanctions, however, with French President Francois Hollande calling for sanctions to be ended outright.
Hollande insisted that Putin “doesn’t want to annex eastern Ukraine,” a point Russia has repeatedly made but which has been oft ignored over the past year. As the two biggest economic powers in the Eurozone, France and Germany seem presumably able to stop the expansion of those sanctions.
While the US likely won’t follow suit, it likely also won’t matter, as the US doesn’t trade much with Russia to start with, and the sanctions meant little. The EU, by contrast, is heavily dependent on Russia in trade, and vice-versa, so its easy to see where the nations aren’t willing to leave the situation unresolved over the long term.
Too bad that Merkel witch isn't on-board. Gabriel is the reasonable one in that government but in the end, Merkel does what she's ordered by the US embassy.
Sanity beginning to prevail in the asylum. I have speculated that Merkel will go this year as her party chooses to dissociate itself from her damaging (to Germany) anti Russian policy.
I wonder, is Merkel so anti-Russian because she is from East Germany?
She is a scientist but a dumb politician.
No innovation under her claustrophobic leadership.
Colour revolutions will now be scheduled for Berlin and Paris just as they are already ongoing in Prague and Budapest
Grand Mother Merkel is for me a mystery : With which secret USA which listened her phone during years are keeping her in their line ? Her father, a protestant pastor could freely leave DDR and come live in Germany.(spying for DDR).This kind of secret is not heavy enough to keep her.There must be something more serious.
Plus as we've learned they pay all these eurocrooks off. Crates of money to pay off "politicians" everywhere. The American people…get nothing out of all this.
France wants an end to sanctions but apparently not Germany's Merkel. The headline to this piece which suggests that would seem to be wrong.
John Laughland tells RT:
"Who knows! I’ve mentioned earlier that Mrs. Merkel has shown herself to be very aggressively anti-Russian. She fought the European election campaign last May on a very anti-Russian ticket. And she’s turned out to be one of the most hawkish leaders in Europe. Britain as well is very hawkish and very anti-Russian. We’ll see if he can pull it off. I think it is little early to say."
See: http://rt.com/op-edge/219987-france-russia-sancti…
Every sane European knows that Russia is today the region's most significant economic buffer during recessions and depressions. Now that the return of a recession if not depression for the EU threatens Hollande gets cold feet. Merkel does not yet quite believe that the good times may be close to ending.
A severe recession if not depression in the EU may result in the factual splitting of the world economies into the "American Bloc" (from Canada to Argentina) and the "Eurasian Bloc" (From the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean). The biggest sufferer will be the African nations.
Didi, I wouldn't count on any country (except Columbia) in South America to "enlist" in our Army, as it were. They have served prior time and got nothing but latrine duty, and never got above PFC to Seargent Uncle Sam. They figured out that "free market capitalism" is a scam.
World history, Hegel tells us, “is governed by an ultimate design…whose rationality is not that of a particular subject, but a divine and absolute reason,”[15] and sometimes this divine and absolute reason has a cunning way of working itself out in history, irrespective of what evil men intended to do.
Wealth is power — The lubricant that gets things done
Surely, for Empire USA has full spectrum dominance over the West, as it has more wealth then Western Europe, Canada and Australia combined. So, if our Empire wants a nation bankrupt then only by a sizable and well organized group of nations could it be stopped.
Problem here is, Western Europeans have always considered uncivilized Russia to be beneath their dignity. And so, as both Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler failed to conquer the vast kingdom of Russia, to their way of thinking, if they can’t humble Putin with sanctions, then they will surely do it with bombs.
They may try but Russia, never. NEVER lost a war.
Battles, yes but no war!
Well, except for the Livonian War, the Polish-Muscovite War, the Ingrian War, the Smolensk War, the Russian-Manchu Border War, the Ottoman part of the Great Northern War, the War of the Austrian Succession, the War of the Second Coalition, the War of the Third Coalition, the War of the Fourth Coalition, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Latvian War of Independence, the Estonian War of Independence, the Lithuanian-Soviet War, the Polish-Soviet War, the Eritrean War of Independence, and the First Chechen War, you're absolutely right — Russia NEVER lost a war!
you forgot one:The war of the worlds led by Orson Wells from a broadcasting studio in your beloved Amerika
Ah, yes — all those Russian defeats were imaginary and just Amerikan propaganda, huh?
no,not really imaginary but,as it seems to escape to your reasoning abilities,just about as relevant
Well, let's see:
1) The claim was "They may try but Russia, never. NEVER lost a war. Battles, yes but no war!"
2) I listed a crap ton of wars that Russia lost.
How is (2) not relevant to (1)?
well let's consider a few examples: when Rome lost The War the never recovered,when Austro-Hungary lost The War they never recovered,when Turkey lost The War they never recovered. i do not,even,want to talk about whwt happened to the Polish,Mongols,Estonians,Latvians,Chechens etc.
What is this "The War" you speak of? Rome lost the First Gallic War and certainly "recovered."
Lots of countries lose wars and then recover.
The claim was that Russia never lost a war. That claim is, in a word, bullshit. It's just that simple.
it is,i understand now,useless to carry a conversation with you,sir.
Well, it's useless to carry on a conversation with anyone if you're not willing to make at least a little bit of sense.
I think it is fairer to say that Russia was not conquered and subjugated by the West.
Even China and India had to endure that humiliation – not to mention the peoples of Africa, the Americas and Southeast Asia?
And so long as the Chinese and Russians keep their territories intact and do not permit another Sino-Russian split, the Empire will be helpless.
The only other alternative is for the U.S. to re-arm Japan and Germany and watch as Eurasia destroys itself as it did under the watchful balancing eye of the U.S. in WWII.
The world may be about to winess a replay not of WWI but WWII.
you are forgetting the conquering and subjugation of russia by the mongol horde. the reason i mention this is even they stayed out of afghanistan.
Why are the Mongols always referred to as "the hordes", but never the Romans, Greeks, French, British, Russian, Japanese, etc.? Oh wait, maybe the Native Americans described the European settlers as hordes (in their native tongue)?
John Ellis, there is no "Empire USA." What exists now is merely the North American satrapy (province) of Israel, willingly and happily allowed and facilitated by a cowardly congress, truly a nest of vipers or a "murder" [sic] of traitors.
What are we going to do when enough of the rest of the world has had enough of our bulls–t and imposes their own sanctions on us …….like ceasing to buy any more of our silly bonds and dump the bonds they already hold possibly all at once and refuse to use the USDollar for reserve currency and start buying oil and gas in Euro and Yen and anything else? Then they can refuse to make all our s–t for us at slave wages.
What goes around eventually will come around. The arrogance of Empire is so Sickening.
I am sure if Washington starts seeing significant pressure to ease the sanctions, they will just have Kiev escalate the fighting in the east, then blame Russia again. Not until they are called out on this by European leaders will there be some hope of ending the conflict and lifting the unfair sanctions on Russia.
This calls for a US led push on Kiev to start the violence again as soon as possible. That will manufacture the pretence that Russia is doing the fighting. Russia must be somehow persuaded to get involved so that the West can switch the blame onto Putin. If France and Germany don't take the bait then it will look very bad for the US. We all know that's not a likely outcome so stay focused on how the US will get the fighting going again. Soon.
Putin should ask for Russia to be allowed join the Eurozone.
A Euro backed by Russian mineral resources and mountain of gold would get Germany off the hook.
Plus it would put the bear amongst the hawks – to contort a cliche.
Russia is a christian nation (according to their own constitution) and wouldn't support the gay. That's Obama's big problem with Russia, laws against gay indoctrination of children. Well, I guess a lot of Americans have a problem with that.
Psychopat Obama and his followers want a confrontation between Kiev and Russia. More over Kiev need a war again because they did not received the money they want.However what ukrainian people should understand is that a normal leader choose butter instead of guns.(first lesson in macrozconomy).From the begining of the civil war with separatists Kiev did not choose butter.
France should just act unilaterally, as it has at least a semblance of independence.
Germany remains an occupied nation, and cannot act without the consent of the Atlanticist-Zionist Emperor.
One of my favorite "Far Side" cartoons is the one with the lion tamer. You see him in the lion cage doing some kind of performance with the lions all sitting on stools lined up next to each other. As the man holds his whip and chair he is sticking his head into the nearest lion's mouth. The lion has a thought bubble over his head that reads "One of these days…"