Russia's President Vladimir Putin is saying that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras did not ask him for any financial support during his visit to Moscow on Wednesday. The embattled Greek socialist premier nevertheless came away with promises of big Russian loans for joint projects in the energy and telecommunications sectors. Whether these materialize is entirely another matter. Moscow's own economy is addled by the oil price collapse and international sanctions. Whatever funding is produced is unlikely to be extensive. Greece's own inchoate and corrupt economy is, moreover, unlikely to be able to produce any transformational commercial initiatives beyond a long-considered plan to liquify gas piped from Russia.
Nevertheless, the meeting of the two leaders was arguably worth an incalculable amount in diplomatic and strategic terms. The EU countries are far from united in their backing for the US-led sanctions over Ukraine. Cyprus, whose banks have benefitted from massive inflows of Russian funds, has always been equivocal. Italy also has its doubts. Former foreign minister Federica Mogherini openly suggested that the sanctions were too harsh. She said that failed talks to get Russia to cease its involvement in the east Ukraine rebellion should be resumed. It appeared she cared nothing for Moscow's seizure of Crimea. Mogherini is now in charge of the EU's foreign affairs. Though she has moderated her appeasement, there is little doubt that she remains uneasy about the sanctions.
Putin has also cultivated the maverick Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orban, whose own interference in the judiciary and the media, to say nothing of the electoral process, has caused considerable alarm in Brussels. Meanwhile, Moscow has been quietly bullying the Baltic states, albeit without apparent success.
The Greek visit was without doubt Putin's biggest coup. Tsipras promised Greek voters he was going to end painful economic reforms and force the EU into widespread debt forgiveness and the provision of yet more funds. He has been rudely disabused on all counts. The economic reforms have hardly begun. Fellow eurozone states simply no longer trust the Greeks to do what they promise. This, after all, is a country whose central bank fixed the figures to conceal the full extent of its international debts.
So Tsipras, with a level of political daring that has taken the rest of the EU by surprise, and caused not a little exasperation, has gone on the attack. He has launched a €250 billion claim for war reparations against Germany. And now he is talking openly of resuming profitable agricultural trade with Russia which had been suspended by Russia in response to the US-led sanctions. If Putin reopens Russian markets to Greek exports, it will pose Washington with a interesting dilemma. Technically speaking, the Greeks would not be breaching the international sanctions regime.
But the payoff for Putin would be considerable. There would be a further crack in the united front that the EU is supposed to be showing in response to Russian aggression. Washington is already in despair at the EU's lack of determination and purpose in the face of the aggression that it happening on its very own border. Its European NATO allies refuse to spend the agreed minimum two percent of their budgets on defense, preferring to let the Americans do the military heavy lifting. As one US State Department official commented bitterly last month: “Getting the Europeans to act together in their own best interests is like trying to herd cats”.
