German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin will have plenty to talk about when they meet tomorrow thanks in no small part to US President Donald Trump, whose sanctions and criticisms over trade, energy and NATO have created new worries for both leaders.<\/p>\n
The two will meet at the German government\u2019s guest house outside Berlin and will give short statements beforehand but aren\u2019t planning a news conference, German officials have said.<\/p>\n
Government spokesman Steffen Seibert has said that topics will include the civil war in Syria, the conflict in Ukraine, and energy questions.<\/p>\n
Stefan Meister, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said that there is \u201can increased interest on both sides to talk about topics of common interest\u201d and that, in part because of Trump, the two sides have shifted focus from earlier meetings that focused on Russia\u2019s conflict with Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Merkel was a leading supporter of sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine\u2019s Crimea region.<\/p>\n
The two leaders are far from being allies, however, Meister wrote in an analysis for the council that the talks will still involve \u201chard bargaining\u201d from Putin\u2019s end and neither side is likely to make significant compromises but both could send a signal that they will \u201cnot let themselves be pressured by Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
The background to this meeting includes Trump\u2019s announcement that he plans to impose sanctions on Russia in response to the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain.<\/p>\n
A first set of sanctions would target US exports of goods with potential military use starting Aug 22, while a second set of broader sanctions could take effect 90 days later if Russia does not confirm it is no longer using chemical weapons and allow on-site inspections. Russia has denied involvement in the poisoning.<\/p>\n
Meister said that Putin can use the meeting to \u201csend a signal to Washington that there are allies of the US that still do business with Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond that, he can push for Germany and the European Union not to support further sanctions, particularly a second round that might hit businesses working with the Nord Stream 2 project.<\/p>\n
The project would add another natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, allowing more Russian gas to bypass Ukraine and Poland. Trump has criticised Nord Stream 2 and the gas supplies, saying German is \u201ctotally controlled\u201d by Russia by being dependent on the energy.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s criticism was linked to his push for other NATO member countries, particularly Germany, to pay a bigger share of the cost of NATO\u2019s common defense.<\/p>\n
From her end, Merkel will push for a Russian commitment to keep at least some gas transiting Ukraine, which earns transit fees from it.<\/p>\n
Putin has said he\u2019s open for shipments to continue if Ukraine settles a gas dispute with Russia.<\/p>\n
Germany also has a strong interest in seeing some of the Syrian refugees in Germany return home in any settlement of the civil war in their home country, and could seek Russia\u2019s support for that with President Bashar Assad.<\/p>\n
Russia has backed Assad with military force. Putin has pushed Germany and other Western nations to help rebuild Syria\u2019s economy ravaged by more than seven years of civil war, arguing that it would help encourage refugees from Syria to return home, easing the pressure on Europe.<\/p>\n
Merkel\u2019s decision to allow in a flood of refugees in 2015 led to a backlash against her immigration policy and boosted the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party.<\/p>\n
Both Germany and Russia have expressed a desire to maintain the agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program in return for easing some economic sanctions.<\/p>\n
Trump has pulled the US out of the program and imposed new sanctions, saying that they will also hit foreign countries that keep doing business with Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin will have plenty to talk about when they meet tomorrow thanks in no small part to US President Donald Trump, whose sanctions and criticisms over trade, energy and NATO have created new worries for both leaders. The two will meet at the German government\u2019s guest house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39473,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39471\/revisions\/39473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}