Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked sanctions against his country and called for an end to trade protectionism in an editorial published in Germany yesterday ahead of the G20 summit.
Sanctions against Russia “are not just short-sighted, but go against the principles of the G20 for cooperation in the interests of all countries,” Putin wrote in the business daily Handelsblatt.
“I am convinced that only open trade relations, based on uniform norms and standards, can stimulate the growth of the world economy and promote an improvement in relations between states,” he said.
Photo: AP
The two-day G20 summit, starting in Hamburg, Germany, today, is to bring together the leaders of the world’s biggest developed and emerging economies.
The US, the EU and others have imposed sanctions on Russia for its seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its backing of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has responded with measures of its own, including a ban on Western food imports.
Putin is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump in Hamburg today.
Trump was in Poland on Wednesday, for what is his second foreign outing, where he said that Russia might have interfered in the US presidential election last year that brought him to power.
“I’ve said it very simply: I think it could very well have been Russia,” Trump said. “I think it could well have been other countries. I won’t be specific, but I think a lot of people interfere.”
“Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure,” he said.
“I remember when I was sitting back listening about Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction. How everybody was 100 percent sure that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Guess what — that led to one big mess,” Trump said of intelligence claims that prompted the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“My big question is why did [former US president Barack] Obama do nothing about it from August until November [last year]?” he said. “It wasn’t because he choked.”
Trump’s four-day trip to Europe began in Warsaw, where the US agreed to sell Patriot missile defense systems to Poland in a memorandum signed on Wednesday, Polish Minister of Defense Antoni Macierewicz said.
In Hamburg yesterday, 10 cars were set ablaze outside a Porsche dealership.
Police said they were investigating whether the incident was related to the G20 summit.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and top EU officials yesterday agreed to the broad outline of a landmark trade deal.
“Today we agreed in principle on an Economic Partnership Agreement [with Japan], the impact of which goes far beyond our shores,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at a news conference with Abe and EU President Donald Tusk.
The EU and Japanese economies combined account for more than one-quarter of global output, making the deal one of the biggest trade pacts ever attempted.
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