Russia uses corruption in Europe to advance its interests – Ukrainian expert

Thursday, January 22, 2015 - 17:11 (EET) Section: Latest news

Russia uses corruption to defend and promote its interests in Europe, including financing for certain political forces.
President of global research center “Strategy XXI” Mykhailo Honchar said this during presentation of analytical report to the Institute of World Politics regarding reaction of France, Italy and Spain on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on Thursday in Kyiv, Ukrinform reported.
“If we had a correlation of corruption within the EU, ranging from refined Sweden or Denmark to Greece or Cyprus, we would see that most pro-Russian position is held by those countries holding appropriate places in the correlation of corruption, because it’s more comfortable for Russians to operate there,” Honchar said.
He said Moscow could quite easily afford to finance certain political groups in Europe since it receives significant revenues from its energy exports to the EU. “On average, the annual export of oil from Russia to Europe totals $180 billion, oil products total $100 billion, natural gas export totals $63-67 billion,” the expert said, adding that even 1% of this amount totals several billion US dollars which Russia can easily use to achieve its goals.
Expert also points out inertia and reluctance of intellectual and expert circles in the EU to recognize largely inadequate perception of Russia using those models that had been shaped over the last 15 years. A stereotype was created in the West with support of Russian propaganda that Russia is a democracy so it’s difficult for the European intellectual and expert community to recognize its achievements as “junk”. The same thing happened with a strenuous reformatting of “a huge group of Sovietologists” when the Soviet Union broke up, Honchar said.