Danko: Let's Not Confuse Sanctions Against Russia with Quarantine

Moscow, May 8 (TASR-corespondent) – Parliamentary Chair Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS) held talks with State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin in Moscow on Wednesday on investment opportunities for Slovak firms in Russia.

The upshot of the talks will be a trade mission of some dozen Slovak businesses to Russia in late June.

During the mission, Slovak businesses will present themselves at the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade and subsequently visit a specific region with investment opportunities. Danko detailed that this concerns, for instance, the glass-making industry, mechanical engineering and also the automobile sector with sub-suppliers included.

Danko stressed at a press briefing that the volume of trade between the EU and Russia dropped by 20 percent following the introduction of sanctions against Russia, whereas the trade turnover between Russia and the United States swelled by 20 percent.

“Our people confuse sanctions with blockade or quarantine,” claimed Danko, adding that a “great number of foreign corporations are racing each other” to invest in Russia. “It’s necessary to tell the truth: Germans and French are coming here and there are enormous opportunities.”

Danko expects car imports to Russia to go up in the future, pointing also to less stringent Russian emission norms when compared to the EU.

At the briefing, Volodin underlined that the meeting took place at the time when both countries are commemorating the WW2 Victory Day. “It’s our shared history; 63,000 soldiers of the Red Army laid down their lives liberating Slovakia,” he stated and praised the care Slovakia shows in tending to memorials to the fallen Red Army soldiers.

Danko invited to Slovakia a Russian parliamentary delegation, to be headed by State Duma Vice-chairman Piotr Tolstoy, a descendant of writer Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy.