Alexander Romanovich: isolation of Russia doesn’t work out 25 марта 2015 Alexander Romanovich, Secretary of the Presidium of the IR Party Central Council on Foreign Affairs, a deputy of the SD JR faction commented on the position of the European countries regarding the extension of the sanctions against Russia: I recollect how upon completion of the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) which did not remove restrictions from the activity of our delegation, a reporter of American newspaper The Wall Street Journal applied to me with a request to give some comments for his publication. I said that in my opinion, the principal result of the summit was lack of a unanimous negative attitude to Russia among the European parliamentarians. Europe will not be unanimous in this respect in the future either. Now we can see that seven European countries disagree about toughening of the sanctions against Russia. They are Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, Austria and Spain. Shortly before their leaders’ statements, Moscow was visited by Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Italian prime-minister Matteo Renzi. Next is the new prime-minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras whom I had the opportunity to meet with in 2013 when he was an opposition politician. The European "Fronde" has already started to irritate experts of the American intellectual headquarters. The German press published the application of a group of professors from University of California, Berkeley which is full of anxiety regarding "Putin’s secret agents" in Europe. Washington is grieving over the support provided to Moscow by such politicians as Czech President Milos Zeman, Hungarian Prime-Minister Victor Orban, German social-democrat Matthias Plattzeck, Dutch far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders, and finally, it is Marine Le Pen whose party has just succeeded in the local elections throughout France. According to the Bloomberg Agency, now Finland, Bulgaria, Portugal, France and Malta might be referred to the counties that "are more inclined not to support" continuation of the economic war with Russia. Romania "is more inclined to support" extension of the sanctions while Luxembourg, Holland, Ireland, Denmark, Slovenia and Croatia prefer neutrality. The motives ruling the responsible politicians who are against the anti-Russian sanctions are not very important: it does not matter if it is either hearty mercantilism or the feeling of justice, or may be both. It is important to go on working at expansion of the "anti sanction club" of the European countries. The results of this work may be summed up in July when the issue of further fate of the sanctions will be under discussion.
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