Scholz: Germany is not helping to finance Putin's war
Created: 03/27/2022, 23:28
Chancellor Olaf Scholz was a guest on the ARD program "Anne Will".
© Wolfgang Borrs/NDR/dpa
Because of the sanctions, Russia has no access to foreign exchange reserves, Chancellor Scholz argued in "Anne Will".
He is confident that Germany can soon become independent of Russian energy.
Berlin - Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected criticism that Germany is helping to finance Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine with its energy imports from Russia.
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"Russia currently cannot do anything with the money it is storing in its accounts because of our sanctions," said the SPD politician on the ARD program "Anne Will".
It's about a few hundred billion in foreign exchange reserves.
"It is therefore very unlikely that this connection even exists."
Germany's dependence on Russian energy imports will be eliminated "quite quickly".
With coal, if everything goes well, this could happen quickly this year, Scholz announced.
This can also happen very quickly with oil.
And for gas, plans that had been in the drawer for a long time have “now been activated”.
The technical infrastructure is being created at great speed in order to be able to import gas from other suppliers.
Scholz against embargo
Scholz again rejected an immediate import boycott.
He warned: "It's about an unbelievable number of jobs." Conversely, should Russia end its exports, Germany would be prepared.
"But if these imports stopped from one day to the next, it would mean that entire branches of industry would have to stop their activities."
Scholz also rejected the Ukrainian proposal for a one-month embargo.
Responsible politics must have the courage to speak the truth.
"And the truth is that if we did that, we would trigger a major economic crisis." It wouldn't be that easy to do in Europe either.
For example, Italy is highly dependent on Russian imports.
Some Eastern European countries have networks that are linked to the Russian network from earlier times, but not to the Western networks.
dpa