BERLIN —NATO members held emergency talks about the crisis in Ukraine on Tuesday and pledged their “solidarity,” but there were signs of division in Europe over how to respond to Russia’s intervention in Crimea. Among the biggest obstacles to consensus: Fears dating to the Cold War are running up against the economic clout of the new Russia. In the former Eastern bloc, political leaders and the populace are seeing the ghost of the Cold War. A nervous Poland, where Lech Walesa stared down the Soviet Union in the 1980s, called Tuesday’s snap meeting of NATO members by invoking a rarely used lever available to members who believe their security or territorial integrity is under threat. Like the United States, Poland is seeking a relatively aggressive stance against Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling for diplomacy but also preparations for economic sanctions and other punitive steps. Other European powers have offered harsh condemnations of Russia’s military moves while keeping one eye on the economic interests they have cultivated with Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia is Germany’s fourth-largest trading partner outside the European Union and its largest supplier of energy. Among the French companies with vast investments in Russia is Renault, which is partly owned by the French government. Through a partnership with Nissan, Renault is set to boost its ownership in Russia’s largest automaker to nearly 75 percent this year. washingtonpost/world/europe/europe-divided-over-russia-as-nato-meets-on-ukraine-crisis/2014/03/04/48dacf68-a3b2-11e3-b865-38b254d92063_story.html
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:14:50 +0000
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