Tag: EU

Russia cuts off gas to six European countries

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas.

Due to these “transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine,” Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%.

The EU raged that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was “completely unacceptable,” but Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller later added that Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey; and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stated unequivocally, “the decision has been made.”

Russia’s decision plunged the continent into an energy crisis ‘within hours’ as a dispute with Ukraine escalated.

Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in.

Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine.

Source: Zerohedge

Germans rally against Islam

Protesters marched in several German cities again on Monday against higher levels of immigration and what they see as the growing influence of Islam, in defiance of an appeal from Chancellor Angela Merkel to spurn rallies she views as racist.

The rallies, organized by a new grassroots movement known as PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, have become an almost weekly event in the east German city of Dresden in recent months.

Some 18,000 people, the biggest number so far, turned out in Dresden on Monday but similar rallies in Berlin and the western city of Cologne were heavily outnumbered by counter-protesters who accuse PEGIDA of fanning racism and intolerance.

The PEGIDA protesters waved Germany’s black, red and gold flag and brandished posters bearing slogans such as “Against religious fanaticism and every kind of radicalism”.

One poster in Cologne called for “potatoes rather than doner kebabs”, a swipe at ethnic Turks who at around three million represent Germany’s largest immigrant community.

Germany has some of the world’s most liberal asylum rules, partly due to its Nazi past. The number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany, many from the Middle East, jumped to around 200,000 last year — four times as many as in 2012.

In her New Year address last week, Merkel urged Germans to shun the anti-Muslim protesters, saying their hearts were full of hatred.

“We need to … say that right-wing extremism, hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitism should not be allowed any place in our society,” Merkel said on Monday in the eastern town of Neustrelitz.

In Cologne, home to a large Muslim population, there were 10 times as many counter-demonstrators as PEGIDA protesters. In similarly multi-ethnic Berlin, some 5,000 counter-demonstrators swamped around 400 anti-Muslim protesters, local police said.

“Germany is a country where refugees are welcome and the silent majority must not remain silent but rather go out onto the streets and show itself,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said at the Berlin counter-demonstration.

Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks, switched its lights off to protest against the anti-Muslim rallies. Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate turned off its floodlights in a similar gesture of solidarity.

PEGIDA has unsettled Germany’s political establishment and at first looked likely to help the Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the party, already suffering an internal power struggle, is split over how to deal with the movement.

Source: Reuters

Traffickers make $3 on ship with illegal immigrants

Traffickers made some $3m from 359 illegal migrants found abandoned on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean, the Italian police said.

The Ezadeen was towed into the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro after being found by coast guards on Friday.

It is the second such case involving a freighter in a week.

Both ships reportedly started in Turkey, in a change from the Libyan route usually favoured by gangs.

The police chief of Cosenza province, Luigi Liguori, said each migrant had paid between $4,000 and $8,000 to board the ship.

Officers say that the smugglers wore hoods and locked the migrants in the ship’s hold before apparently abandoning ship on a lifeboat.

Last year it is estimated that nearly 3,500 refugees died trying to cross the Mediterranean while another 200,000 were rescued.

Italian Red Cross volunteers were on hand to offer assistance The Ezadeen, an ageing Sierra Leone-flagged ship originally used to transport cattle, was spotted on Thursday evening and arrived in port in Italy on Friday night.

In the earlier case, Italian coastguards boarded a ship, the Blue Sky M, carrying 796 migrants on Tuesday. Finding it without a crew, they steered it into the south Italian port of Gallipoli.

The smugglers’ new tactic appears to be simple and effective: point a cargo ship towards Italy and let the coastguard do the rest.

Illegal migration to the EU has been fuelled by government grants and the promise of easy money.

“Smugglers are finding new routes to Europe and are employing new methods in order to exploit desperate people,” Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s commissioner for migration said, promising to present a “comprehensive approach on migration”.

 

Auf Deutsch bitte!

The rise of immigration in Germany is prompting one of the parties in the government coalition to seek a requirement that would oblige all foreigners to speak only German in public and at home. The proposal has caused a wave of criticism.

A comrade in the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), is due to approve a party draft policy paper proposal on Monday, requiring immigrants to practically abandon the use of their native tongue.

In the paper, as quoted by Reuters, the CSU says: “People who want to remain here on a permanent basis should be obliged to speak German in public and within the family.”

CSU argues that “social interaction works only when all speak the same language”, and says that all foreigners who enter to remain will be offered a language training course.

It was not immediately clear how the party proposes to enforce such a rule without invasive surveillance of immigrants’ homes.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of Merkel’s conservative CDU, agrees with the CSU proposal, arguing that speaking German is crucial for the immigrant integration process.

“Language skills are of paramount importance for good integration opportunities. Therefore, it is important to speak with children at home also in German,” Bosbach told Bayerische Rundfunk.

Yet the new proposal was swiftly denounced by the other parties in Merkel’s government, including a senior official from the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The latest data released by Germany’s statistics office show record immigration last year, with most of the new arrivals coming from European Union countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in search of employment. The influx of 1,226,000 people to Germany in 2013 shows an increase of 13 percent from 2012, the highest on record since 1993.

“It is not the business of politicians whether I speak Latin, Klingon or Hessian at home,” Peter Tauber, general secretary of the CDU, said on Twitter.

Yasmin Fahimi, for the Social Democrats (SPD), called the proposal “totally absurd”.

“The state has no role to play in deciding what language people speak within the walls of their own home,” Fahimi told German newspaper Bild.

Swedish government on brink of collapse

Collapse looms after far-right party vows to strike down government’s budget

Sweden’s minority, centre-left government teetered on the brink of collapse after just two months in office when a far-right party announced it would vote against the 2015 budget, effectively dooming it to defeat.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrat party, which holds the balance of power in parliament, said on Tuesday it would support an alternative budget proposed by the centre-right Alliance opposition bloc, leaving the government isolated.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said last-ditch talks with Alliance leaders to resolve the crisis sparked by the unaligned Sweden Democrats, who want to cut the number of asylum seekers by 90 percent, had proved fruitless.

“There is no one on the other side of the table, it is meaningless to hold talks,” Lofven told reporters after the meeting at the government headquarters, saying he would decide how to proceed after Wednesday’s debate in parliament.

“We may call snap elections later, when the constitution allows. We could also resign and there are other alternatives,” he said.

Rival budget

The leaders of the Moderate, Centre, Christian Democrat and Liberal parties, which make up the Alliance, said they would not budge from their pledge to vote for their own bill.

The budget by the ruling coalition, formed by Social Democrats and the Green Party, would partly reverse tax cuts implemented by the Alliance during their 2006-2014 reign.

Parliament is due to vote on the budget on Wednesday.

One of Lofven’s option to salvage the crisis is to send the budget back to committee for amendments to try to win backing from some or all centre-right parties, though prospects of success are remote.

He could also resign and try to put together a new government – potentially without the Greens.

A last resort would be to call a snap election – something that has not happened since 1958. A vote could be called in late December at the earliest, with the elections taking place within the following three months.

Acting Sweden Democrat leader Mattias Karlsson said his party was flexing its muscles to force a reversal of Sweden’s generous stance on immigration.

“If the Alliance doesn’t change its policies [on immigration], we would try to bring down a government of those parties too,” he said.

Costs for asylum seekers including housing, language lessons and welfare allowances totalled 1.5 percent of the country’s 2013 budget, with Sweden the biggest per-capita recipient of asylum seekers and refugees last year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Sweden Democrats doubled their support in the September election, taking 13 percent of the vote and becoming the third largest party in parliament.

Mainstream parties have shunned them, and the budget gives them a rare opportunity to show their political strength.

Source: Al Jazeera

ISIS supplies run through NATO country

Germany’s international broadcaster published a video report of immense geopolitical implications.

This is possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member’s borders.

Every day, trucks laden with food, clothing, and other supplies cross the border from Turkey to Syria. Turkey is a NATO member.

It is unclear who is picking up the goods, Deutsche Welle reports.

The haulers believe most of the cargo is going to the “Islamic State” militia.

Oil, weapons, and soldiers are also being smuggled over the border, and Kurdish volunteers are now patrolling the area in a bid to stem the supplies.

NATO has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS’ multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines – an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy.

Front National gets Kremlin loan

France’s National Front, is in talks with a Kremlin-linked bank to borrow €40 million to win power in France, Mediapart reports.

The Paris-based online investigative journal last weekend said Marine Le Pen’s party received a €9 million loan from the First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB), which is de facto owned by Roman Popov, a Kremlin-connected oligarch.

But it says in a second report on Wednesday (26 November) the €9 million is the tip of the iceberg.

It notes that its own investigation is corroborated by a member of the Front National’s political bureau.

“The first tranche was paid on a loan of €40 million … the tranche of €9 million has arrived, 31 others will follow,” the source said.

It also cites Bernard Monot, a National Front MEP, who told Mediapart: “We expressed, for sure, a need for comprehensive financing in our discussions with the bank … Our potential need until the [French] presidential and legislative elections [due in 2017] is €45 million”.

“We’re getting there step by step. We’re refining it as we go … We are on a long-term financial package”.

Wallerand de Saint-Just, the National Front’s treasurer, said he knows nothing about the larger sum.

But he noted the party needs between €35 million and €40 million to contest the 2017 votes.

He added he cannot exclude that larger sums were mentioned by Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a National Front MEP who negotiated the FRCB deal, in Schaffhauser’s contacts with the bank.

Meanwhile, Le Pen herself tweeted on Wednesday evening: “Mediapart has lost its head. The amounts it talks about are a total fantasy. FN got a €9mn loan. Full stop”.

She told AFP the €40 million report is “fantastic, delirious”.

EU blacklist
Mediapart goes on to say that Le Pen personally sealed the FRCB loan on a “secret” trip to Russia in February.

It quotes an unnamed Le Pen aide as saying: “Marine Le Pen came at the final stage [of the negotiations]. Yes. To see where we are putting our feet”.

It notes that Schaffhauser, who was present at the meeting, introduced her to Alexander Babakov, a Russian MP, who was the “key” to the FRCB deal.

The EU blacklisted Babakov in September because he voted Yes on a Russian bill on the annexation of Crimea.

The 51-year old, who was born in Moldova, has business interests in the Czech Republic, France, and Ukraine.

According to documents published by Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, the Russian MP owns at least €11 million of real estate in France via his wife, Irina Babakova.

According to Czech media, he was also the co-founder of a Czech-based shell company, Albion CZ, which was liquidated in June.

The National Front revelations come amid multiplying reports of Kremlin ties to anti-EU far-right parties.

German tabloid Bild on Monday cited German intelligence sources as saying Russia is financing the eurosceptic AfD party.

It said the Kremlin used middlemen to sell gold to AfD at below-market prices without AfD’s knowledge of who was behind the transactions.

The left-wing SPO party in Austria has also accused the far-right FPO of receiving Russian money.

AfD and FPO denied the claims. But their Kremlin links were on display this week in meetings in Berlin and Moscow.

Source: euobserver.com

Czech officials receive poison letters

Security tightened at Czech govt offices as 2 ministries get poisoned letters. The Czech president is an outspoken critic of US meddling in Ukraine.

The Czech Interior Ministry is tightening security at government offices after envelopes with deadly doses of poison were sent to two ministries in recent days, Reuters said.

The two letters sent by mail from Sweden and Slovenia were intercepted before reaching the addressees of Finance Minister Andrej Babis and Interior Minister Milan Chovanec.

Two more envelopes, with harmless substances, arrived to the office of President Milos Zeman and a commercial television station. “We do not want to raise panic but… we need to adopt these security measures,” according to Chovanec.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry on Friday received another suspicious package and sent it for analysis.

Marine Le Pen: Open letter to French Central Bank Governor

The French Front National’s leader Marine Le Pen has sent a letter to the Governor of the French Central Bank, the Banque de France, demanding that France join the list of nations which have repatriated their gold, or at least have tried.

In her letter,  Le Pen, who would be elected president of France if elections were held today, demands a gold audit.

Mr. Christian Noyer

Governor of the Banque de France
31 rue Croix des Petits-Champs
75049 PARIS Cedex 01

Nanterre, November 24, 2014

Open letter to Mr Christian Noyer on the gold reserves of France

Dear Governor

On behalf of the French and in my capacity as the main opposition leader, I am writing to you because it is my duty to present a petition on the gold reserves of France, in the best interests of our nation.

Even before the outbreak of the 2008 crisis, the National Front had anticipated and informed the political institutions of the future worsening of the macro-economic and geopolitical context. As part of the increasingly libertarian business model adopted by France under pressure from Brussels, economic fundamentals have not shown improvement.

All the French can see is that the austerity policies demanded by the European Union and the ECB and carried out by the government are a proven failure and have had serious consequences for our country.

The monetary institution you lead has a historic mission to be the central bank depositary of the national monetary reserves including gold reserves. According to our strategic vision and sovereignty, they belong neither to the State nor to the Banque de France, but the French people and also serve as the ultimate guarantee for the public debt and our money.

In the money cold war that is being fought between the West and BRICS countries, gold is increasingly playing an important role. According to the World Gold Council, the official reserves of gold from China, India and Russia increased significantly between 2007 and 2013.

For these reasons and in light of the rapid increase of global systemic risks, it is of the utmost importance to the future solvency of our nation to engage, by mid-2015, in a detailed audit, the results of which will be the subject of a report.

Le Pen also demands a complete inventory of the quantities of physical gold, all 2435 tonnes, as well as their quality (serial number, purity, bars ‘Good Delivery’etc.), conducted by an independent French body. This inventory will need to indicate the country in which the gold reserves are stored, she adds.

Over the period 2004-2012, about 614,6 tonnes of gold have been sold by France while at the same time the other Eurosystem central banks including the ECB pledged to limit their gold sales. According to a report by the Court of Auditors of 2012, this is extremely costly to the government and constitutes a serious violation of the national heritage, carried out without any democratic consultation.

Le Pen requests the urgent repatriation of all gold reserves from abroad.

Just like your heroic predecessors of the Bank of France in 1939 and 1940 had organized the evacuation of French gold, you will need to undertake this vast security operation of the national treasury, a patriotic act which will be recognized in time by public opinion.

I hope that, respectful of your duties as a high official in the service of the State, you will show the commitment and courage necessary to defend the general interest of our country. The challenge is considerable, it is the future of France which is at stake!

I beg you to accept, Sir, the Governor, the expression of my highest consideration.

Marine Le Pen

‘Sanctions are aimed at regime change in Russia’

The ultimate goal of the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by some Western nations is to stir public protests and oust the government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“Western leaders publicly state that the sanctions must hurt [Russia’s] economy and stir up public protests. The West doesn’t want to change Russia’s policies. They want a regime change. Practically nobody denies that,” he told a leading think-tank in Moscow.

Lavrov said that the tensions between Russia and the West had been brewing for years before the Ukrainian crisis, adding that now the Europeans had decided to go for all-or-nothing and play chicken with Russia. But at least the positions have been made clear, Lavrov said.

Russia and the EU are having a moment of truth focused on Ukraine, Lavrov said, but stressed that Moscow would not be the one to break off ties with Europe. However, Russia won’t simply go back to how things were before the crisis hit, he said.

“The EU is our largest partner,” Lavrov said. “Nobody is going to shoot himself in the foot and reject cooperation with Europe, but everyone understands that it won’t be business as usual anymore.

“But we don’t need the kind of business we had. [That] was like ‘Russia must do this and must do that,’ and we want to cooperate as equals,” he added.

He laid the blame for the escalation on an “aggressive minority” among EU nations, who pursue ideologically-driven grabs of power in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, instead of focusing on the serious problems that Europe is facing due to the turmoil across the Mediterranean in North Africa and the Middle East.

“Exporting any kind of ideology, whether it is democratic or communist or any other kind, won’t do any good,” he warned.

Ideology blinds Europeans to some problems, which Russia believes need to be solved, Lavrov said. For example, EU officials are reluctant to speak about the persecution of Christians by Muslim militants in Iraq and Syria or elsewhere, because they fear that this would be perceived as politically incorrect. Meanwhile there is a growing Christianophobia in the world, he said.

“Most of EU members avoid discussing this issue. They are ashamed to pronounce it as they were ashamed to put a phrase acknowledging the Christian roots of Europe into the EU Constitution,” Lavrov said. “If you don’t remember and don’t respect your own roots and traditions, how can you respect the traditions of other people?”

‘Russia not anti-American’
Lavrov blamed the US for claiming global leadership at a time when both its resources and leadership skills are in decline. Particularly, he said, Washington is increasingly tuning its policies with electoral cycles, as long-term goals are sacrificed for short-term gains of popularity among voters.

“We cannot accept the position of those who tell us: ‘Put up with it. Everyone has to suffer from America having elections every two years, and nothing should be done about it. Relax and take it as a given’. This won’t do. We won’t take it because the stakes are too high,” Lavrov said.
He added that while some take Russia’s opposition to America’s global influence as anti-Americanism, this is not the case.

“It’s not about anti-Americanism or forming some sort of anti-American coalition. It’s about the natural desire of an increasing number of nations to ensure their vital interests and doing it in a way they see right, not the way they are being told by a foreign party,” he said.

If the US pursues leadership not out of a false perception that it has a God-given burden to take responsibility for everybody, but by developing the skill to form a consensus, Moscow would be the first to back Washington, Lavrov said.

But now Washington is bullying other nations into toeing their line, and few dare to object publicly out of fear of reprisal, while complaining in private, he added.

Dutch government refuses to disclose ‘secret deal’ into MH17 crash

The Dutch government has refused to reveal details of a secret pact between members of the Joint Investigation Team examining the downed Flight MH17. If the participants, including Ukraine, don’t want information to be released, it will be kept secret.

The respected Dutch publication Elsevier made a request to the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) agreement, along with 16 other documents, RT reported.

The JIT consists of four countries – the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and Ukraine – who are carrying out an investigation into the MH17 disaster, but not Malaysia. Malaysian Airlines, who operated the flight, has been criticized for flying through a war zone.

Part of the agreement between the four countries and the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, ensures that all these parties have the right to secrecy. This means that if any of the countries involved believe that some of the evidence may be damaging to them, they have the right to keep this secret.

“Of course [it is] an incredible situation: how can Ukraine, one of the two suspected parties, ever be offered such an agreement?” Dutch citizen Jan Fluitketel wrote in the newspaper Malaysia Today.

Despite the air crash taking place on July 17 in Eastern Ukraine, very little information has been released about any potential causes. However, rather than give the public a little insight into the investigation, the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice is more worried about saving face among the members of the investigation.

“I believe that this interest [international relations] is of greater importance than making the information public, as it is a unique investigation into an extremely serious event,” the Ministry added, according to Elsevier.

Other reasons given for the request being denied included protecting investigation techniques and tactics as well as naming the names of officials who are taking part in the investigation. The Ministry said it would be a breach of privacy if they were revealed. “If the information was to be released then sensitive information would be passed between states and organizations, which would perhaps they would be less likely to share such information in the future,” said the Ministry of Security and Justice.

Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt, who is a member of the Christian Democratic Party, has made several requests for the information to be released to the public. “We just do not know if the Netherlands has compromised justice,” he said in reaction to the ministry’s decision. The MP was surprised that this agreement was even signed, never mind kept secret.

Malaysia is the only country to have directly negotiated with the anti-Kiev militias in the East of Ukraine, while the country’s Ambassador to the Netherlands said he was unhappy that Malaysia had not been included within the JIT. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte flew to Kuala Lumpur on November 5, but Malaysia says it still did not receive an invitation to join.

“We must first be included in the JIT, otherwise it would be hard for us to cooperate in the investigation. The parties inside the investigation must include us in the team, right now we are just a participant,” said the Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, which was reported by the New Straits Times.

A preliminary report by the Dutch Safety Board, which was released September said the MH17 crash was a result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that struck the Boeing from the outside.

Dutch investigators added that “there are no indications” that the tragedy was triggered “by a technical fault or by actions of the crew.”

Revolt against ECB brewing in Italy

Next week, Italy’s Beppe Grillo – the leader of the Italian Five Star Movement – will start collecting signatures with the aim of getting a referendum in Italy on leaving the euro “as soon as possible,” just as was done in 1989.

As Grillo explains to the BBC, they “will leave the Euro and bring down this system of bankers, of scum.”

With two-thirds of Parliament apparently behind the plan, Grillo exclaims “we are dying, we need a Plan B to this Europe that has become a nightmare – and we are implementing it,” raging that “we are not at war with ISIS or Russia! We are at war with the European Central Bank,” that has stripped us of our sovereignty.”

Beppe rages against the ECB:

It is high time for me and for the Italian people, to do something that should have been done a long time ago: to put an end to your sitting in this place, you who have dishonoured and substituted the governments and the democracies without any right. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? A crumb of humanity? Is there one vice you do not possess? Gold and the “spread” are your gods. GDP is you golden calf.
We’ll send you packing at the same time as Italy leaves the Euro. It can be done! You well know that the M5S will collect the signatures for the popular initiative law – and then – thanks to our presence in parliament, we will set up an advisory referendum as happened for the entry into the Euro in 1989. It can be done! I know that you are terrified about this. You will collapse like a house of cards. You will smash into tiny fragments like a crystal vase. Without Italy in the Euro, there’ll be an end to this expropriation of national sovereignty all over Europe. Sovereignty belongs to the people not to the ECB and nor does it belong to the Troika or the Bundesbank. National budgets and currencies have to be returned to State control. They should not be controlled by commercial banks. We will not allow our economy to be strangled and Italian workers to become slaves to pay exorbitant interest rates to European banks.

The Euro is destroying the Italian economy. Since 1997, when Italy adjusted the value of the lira to connect it to the ECU (a condition imposed on us so that we could come into the euro), Italian industrial production has gone down by 25%. Hundreds of Italian companies have been sold abroad. These are the companies that have made our history and the image of “Made in Italy”.

German business leaders abandoning Merkel

German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under pressure from leading industrialists to roll back sanctions against Russia, as some of her backers switch their support to her party’s Eurosceptic rival, the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Merkel’s aides say she has been “annoyed” by phone calls from chief executives of large companies, demanding a relaxation of Germany’s stance towards the Kremlin in order to preserve £59bn a year in trade with Russia.

However, senior business figures, including Heinrich Weiss, head of the supervisory board of SMS, an engineering company with 13,000 employees, have switched their support from Merkel’s Christian Democrats to the AfD, which opposes sanctions.

SMS is heavily involved in both Russia and Ukraine, where a deal worth up to £118m was jeopardised by as US-led putsch.

Weiss, 72, was chairman of the Christian Democrats’ economic advisory council under Merkel’s predecessor Helmut Kohl.

“The sanctions policy is irrational because it will never influence Russian actions in Ukraine, but it is doing lasting damage to German businesses and jobs,” a senior SMS executive told The Sunday Times.

Another prominent businessman to join the AfD is Hans Wall, founder of a street furniture and outdoor advertising company, who has various business interests in Russia. He was formerly a supporter of the Free Democrats, Merkel’s junior coalition partners.

Merkel faced another setback last month when the heads of several German multinationals — including the pharmaceuticals group Bayer, BASF chemicals and the energy giant Eon — travelled to Moscow with other western businessmen to meet Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister.

That was seen as a slap in the face for Merkel’s policy. “The last thing we need is a parallel foreign policy by industry,” one of her aides told Der Spiegel magazine.

About 300,000 jobs in Germany are believed to depend on trade with Russia.

Merkel last week rejected any lifting of sanctions and called for them to be extended.

But some of her neighbours are wavering: Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus have all indicated they would not support further sanctions because of trade with Moscow or dependence on Russian gas.

Russia, China sign second mega deal

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping have discussed the possibility of using the yuan in mutual transactions in different fields of cooperation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

“Much attention has been paid to the topic of mutual payments in diverse fields … in yuans which will help to strengthen the yuan as the region’s reserve currency,” Peskov said commenting on the meeting held between Putin and Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing, RIANovosti reported.

On October 13, Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev announced that Russia was considering Chinese market to partially substitute access to the financial resources of the European Union and the United States.

The European Union and the United States have imposed several rounds of economic sanctions on Russia over its alleged involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, a claim Moscow has repeatedly denied. The restrictions prohibit major Russian companies from seeking financing on western capital markets.

Since the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West, Moscow has increased its economic cooperation with the BRICS, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

During the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum taking place this weekend in Beijing, Russia and China signed 17 documents on Sunday, greenlighting a second “mega” Russian natural gas to China via the so-called “western” or “Altay” route, which as previously reported, would supply 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year to China.

Among the documents signed between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping were the memorandum on the delivery of Russian natural gas to China via the western route, the framework agreement on gas supplies between Russia’s Gazprom and China’s CNPC and the memorandum of understanding between the Russian energy giant and the Chinese state-owned oil and gas corporation.

“We have reached an understanding in principle concerning the opening of the western route,” Putin said. “We have already agreed on many technical and commercial aspects of this project, laying a good basis for reaching final arrangements.”

With the increase of deliveries via the western route, the total volume of Russian gas deliveries to China may exceed the current levels of export to Europe in the medium-term perspective.

China has now eclipsed Europe as Russia’s biggest, and most strategic natural gas client.