RusEnergy

20.11.2006 - MosNews - Hungarian-born billionaire investor George Soros has warned Germany that the country is dependent on Russia for its energy sources but is in denial about this situation, the British Financial Times reported on Monday, Nov. 20. “(The Germans) don’t want to acknowledge the danger that it presents,” Soros told the FT’s sister newspaper, Les Echos. Germany is the world’s biggest customer for Russian gas exports. Soros said the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is using energy as a tool in a bid to reclaim the country’s leading role on the international stage. Energy policy was also aimed at “enriching the top officials in Russia and to corrupt dictators in neighboring countries and take control of their natural resources”, he was quoted in the newspaper as saying. “Vladimir Putin is not a dictator because Russia has the trappings of a democracy, but the Kremlin seeks to concentrate power and it already dominates the Duma assembly, the opposition and the media,” Soros said. The comments came as an increasingly dependent European Union prepared to seek to rebalance its energy relationship with Russia and boost ties with other key suppliers at a series of major meetings this week. The 25-nation bloc hopes to lay the foundations for a balanced energy relationship with Moscow when Putin attends an EU-Russia summit in Helsinki on Friday, Nov. 24.