Head of State
Putin: Good relations between Moscow and Berlin blown up
“Russia has always been a reliable energy supplier”: Vladimir Putin. photo
© Valery Sharifulin/Sputnik Kremlin/AP/dpa
In his speech at the inauguration of new ambassadors in Moscow, Kremlin leader Putin criticized the “sabotage of Nord Stream” and blamed the federal government for the current ice age.
“This cooperation (in the energy sector) was literally blown up – among other things by the sabotage of Nord Stream,” Putin told the new German ambassador in Moscow, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff. The relationship between Berlin and Moscow was frozen “not on our initiative,” Putin complained in his speech in the Kremlin, which was broadcast on state television.
Putin: Russia ready to resume relations
The 71-year-old blamed the federal government for a new ice age that was not beneficial for Germany, Russia, or the entire European continent. Putin emphasized that Russia has always been a reliable energy supplier and is ready to resume relations. Last year, Russia continued to throttle gas deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and stopped them altogether in September, allegedly for technical reasons – shortly before the line was damaged in an explosion in the Baltic Sea.
Lambsdorff was not the only one of the 21 newly introduced ambassadors who had to listen to criticism. Diplomats from other European countries, Australia, South Korea and Singapore also accused Putin of their governments’ hostile policies towards Russia.
The president stood at a great distance from the ambassadors at the ceremony in the Kremlin and justified this with the continued hygiene regulations in the wake of the corona pandemic. He had kept the international diplomats waiting because he was visiting an exhibition, where he had gotten much closer to the guests.