Comment by the Information and Press Department on the upcoming visit of German Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to Russia
On March 8-9, the Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany Sigmar Gabriel will visit Russia at the invitation of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
On March 9, the ministers will discuss Russian-German relations and practical issues on the bilateral agenda, including the implementation of trade, economic, cultural, humanitarian, historical and memorial cooperation projects.
They will exchange opinions on the key international issues, in particular the implementation of the Minsk Agreements for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, assistance to the peace process in Syria and normalisation in Libya, as well as European security and the fight against international terrorism. They will also discuss Russian-German interaction in G20 in the context of Germany’s G20 Presidency this year.
Russian-German trade continues to decline. According to Russia’s Federal Customs Service, bilateral trade went down to $40.7 billion in 2016, or by 11.1 per cent compared to 2015. Russia’s exports to Germany fell 16.1 per cent to $21.3 billion, while imports from Germany decreased by 4.8 per cent to $19.4 billion. However, Germany remains one of Russia’s largest foreign trade partners. Germany accounts for 8.7 per cent of Russia’s foreign trade (the second largest after China’s 14.1 per cent).
In the first half of 2016, German direct investments in Russia amounted to EUR 1.73 billion, which is almost twice as much as yearend investment in 2015 (EUR 1.78 billion). German investments in Russia in April-June 2016 reached EUR 655 million, which is three times more than in the same period of 2015. The Bank of Russia estimates Germany’s aggregate investments in Russia at over $13 billion. There are some 5,600 companies with German capital in the Russian market, including approximately 800 fully German-owned companies. Their aggregate turnover is more than $50 billion; they employ some 270,000 people.
On October 31, 2016, the Russian-German Interdepartmental Working Group on Strategic Economic and Financial Cooperation Issues held its 35th full meeting. German businesses have demonstrated their intention to keep working in Russia.
Inter-parliamentary, interdepartmental and interregional ties are developing actively. The next Russian-German Conference of Partner Cities will be held in Krasnodar on June 28-30, 2017.
Cultural and humanitarian ties, youth exchanges and cooperation between public organisations are vital components of Russian-German relations. The events of the Russian-German Year of Youth Exchange 2016-2017 have had a positive impact. The closing ceremony for the year will be held in Berlin on July 13-16, 2017. The parties are discussing the possibility of holding other cross-cultural years.
A major feature of Russian-German social ties is the Petersburg Dialogue Russian-German Public Forum, which convened for the 15th plenary meeting in St Petersburg in July 2016. The Potsdam Meetings are a respected venue for informal public discussions. The latest Potsdam Meetings conference was held in Moscow in November 2016.
Ties are developing vigorously between the two countries’ historians. The Joint Commission for Studying the Recent History of Russian-German Relations has been working actively. It is co-chaired by Academician Alexander Chubaryan, Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World History.
There are 3,310 Soviet military cemeteries in Germany where 760,000 Russian and Soviet citizens have been buried. The German partners are taking care of these cemeteries in keeping with the intergovernmental agreement on war graves signed on December 16, 1992. In 2000, Russia and the Saxon Memorial Foundation launched a project to trace the fates of Soviet and German prisoners of war and interned persons. Since then, they have collected the personal data of some one million Soviet citizens and 1.5 million Germans in cooperation with archives in Russia, Germany, Belarus and Ukraine.
On September 7, 2016, a ceremony to open an interfaith Peace Chapel was held in the village of Rossoshki (Volgograd Region), where a large WWII military cemetery is located. The chapel was built under the joint patronage of the foreign ministers of Russia and Germany. It symbolises rapprochement and peace between the Russian and German people and will help preserve unbiased historical memory of the events and lessons of World War II.
The Russian party have been working for years to convince Germany to officially recognise Nazi atrocities against Soviet prisoners of war during WWII. This recognition was issued in May 2015 as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations of Victory. Germany announced its decision to make a compensatory humanitarian gesture regarding the surviving Soviet POWs. As of February 15, 2017, the German Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues received some 900 applications for one-time compensation payments from the surviving Soviet prisoners of war. It has taken decisions on 640 applications and has transferred payments to over 600 applicants.
