Germany says it won’t lift anti-Russian sanctions

BERLIN, Sep 6 – PRIME. German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock said that sanctions against Russia would not be lifted due to the situation around gas supplies.

She noted that “now … they oppose our sanctions (against Russia) in general, which allegedly prevent further gas supplies.” She added that “we must make it clear that we will not succumb.”

Burbock believes that Russia allegedly threatens German energy security and that this threat can be eliminated only “thanks to the complete liberation from dependence on fossil energy.”

At an event at the German Foreign Ministry, broadcast live by the ministry’s Twitter account, she stated that the Russian side was allegedly resorting to “blackmail”, citing “failed technical reasons” (the situation around the Nord Stream gas pipeline, through which gas supplies were reduced due to the lack of appropriate turbines).

At the same time, Burbock noted that Berlin opposes a complete embargo on Russian gas and oil, as it cannot abandon these fossil energy resources in one day.

“The German Chancellor, the Economics Minister and I, as Foreign Minister, have always said that we do not want to repeat the mistakes made by the FRG in the past and do not promise things that we cannot deliver. That is why we said that we cannot from one day to the next abandon fossil energy from the Russian Federation,” she said.

Burbock also said that Germany “never received cheap gas” from Russia, it was “paid for” including by weakening the country’s national security.

“It is important to recognize, in terms of what the future holds for us, that we have never really received cheap gas from Russia. The market price may have been favorable at some points, but it has led to a blind dependency or exchange of infrastructures, which was in fact a risk for security. We paid for every cubic meter of Russian gas double and triple at the expense of our national security,” she explained.