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.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
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