Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski: 'Moscow Needs Our Money'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/polish-foreign-minister-discusses-weak-eu-position-in-ukraine-crisis-a-957812.html



Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski: "The Ukrainians are our neighbors. They are fighting for the same things we did back in 1989."

Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski: 'Moscow Needs Our Money'
March 10, 2014 – 03:19 PM

SPIEGEL: You are viewed as being a proponent of taking a harder line against Russia. What are you calling for?

Sikorski: I have always supported working together with Russia when it is possible and when it serves the interests of both sides. But what we are dealing with right now is an attempt to change borders with the use of force. A course of action like that demands a clear response.

SPIEGEL: The European Union imposed very mild sanctions against Russia on Thursday. Isn't it true that Putin, with his gas exports, has far more effective means for countering that pressure?

Sikorski: Only about 30 percent of the natural gas in the EU originates from Russia. Norway is a larger supplier. I do not believe Russia can use it to put us under pressure. Moscow needs our money.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

1. Smart man. About time someone figured out who exactly has ...

... the leverage here. Backwater supply regions don't have power, regardless of their nukes or anything else. They have to sell that one thing to live, whether it be oil or cotton (the old South) or anything else. They tend to think they have power because they control some resource, but commodities can always be substituted for.

[jakeXT]

2. He should talk to his wife, Anne Applebaum from the Washington Post

Russia’s Western enablers

By Anne Applebaum, Published: March 6 E-mail the writer

...

Putin and his colleagues can do what they want, whether in Ukraine, Georgia or Britain, because everyone knows that, whatever the Westerners say, they are all for sale in the end.

...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-russias-western-enablers/2014/03/05/bcba2a88-a4a6-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html

And I bet the Swiss need their money back from Polish home mortgages .

Poles and Hungarians count cost of Swiss franc mortgages

Tomasz Sadlik is among hundreds of thousands of Poles and Hungarians who thought it was a good idea to take out a mortgage denominated in Swiss francs, but are now in trouble as their home currencies plummeted during the financial crisis.

..

In the first such case in Poland, Mr Sadlik is taking his bank – a subsidiary of Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank – to court, accusing them of pushing him hard to take a Swiss franc loan, when it was not in his best interest.

“The bank worker told me I would pay more if I took the loan in zlotys,” he says referring to the 600,000 zloty loan (€166,000 at the time) that has since nearly doubled after the financial crisis hit the Polish currency. “They tricked me.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b44b72c8-47c0-11e3-b1c4-00144feabdc0.html