Foreign media digest for June 15, 2014

First reaction of the Western media on Ukraine minister’s remark about Putin. Newspapers reacted without condemnation, just simply retelling the situation near the Russian embassy in Kiev. International Business Times, The Guardian, the Times, Financial Times, Independent, VOA, Europe online, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Mashable, Spiegel, T-Online, Le Monde, L’Express:

www.ibtimes.co.uk
www.theguardian.com
www.thetimes.co.uk
www.ft.com
www.independent.co.uk
www.voanews.com
en.europeonline-magazine.eu
www.trust.org
www.thedailybeast.com
mashable.com
www.spiegel.de
www.t-online.de
www.lemonde.fr
www.lexpress.fr

The U.S. and EU say they will impose economic sanctions on Russia if it does not cease hostilities in the run-up to the date. The escalation comes as the EU and Ukraine prepare to sign a free trade treaty on 27 June which will legally bind Ukraine to stay out of Russia’s Eurasian Union.
euobserver.com
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said the international community stands ready to impose further sanctions on Russia.
Financial Times, Telegraph, The Guardian.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, condemned an attack on a Ukrainian airplane over the city of Luhansk and said that the international community was ready to impose the next level of sanctions on Russia. “I offer my sincere condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those affected,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement. According to him, “this tragic incident once more highlights the immediate response from Russia to deescalate the conflict in the east of Ukraine, and stop supplying separatists with weapons.”
www.ft.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.theguardian.com
Italians by quoting experts start discussing the dichotomy in the regency of the Kremlin.
La Stampa.
The dichotomy in the regency of the Kremlin divided between those who fear for the future of the country and those who foot down hard on the line, Frahchesko Semprini writes for La Stampa. Anders Aslund, former economic expert of Russian and Ukrainian governments, thinks the situation is very tough and shows Kremlin’s double standards. “Putin is realizing that the financial conditions of Russia are getting worse quickly, uncertainties and market volatility have cost the country 2.5 percentage points in terms of lost growth,” the article points out. Aslund thinks that Putin usually listen to three categories of his associates. The first group is the so-called crown of the oligarchs composed by Gennady Nikolayevich Timchenko, Arkady Rotenberg and Yury Kovalchuk Valentinovich.The second group is composed of the great managers who are most concerned about the situation in Crimea. Finally, the third is made up of the highest national security officials as Platonovich Nikolai Patrushev, former secretary of the FSB, and Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov, also a former number one of the heirs to the KGB. While the first two groups fear the consequences of the economic and financial sanctions, the last group goes to a hard line, the expert informs.
www.lastampa.it
German media once more write about the influence of Russian intelligence service on German vox populi.
Die Welt:
“What Russian journalists have been pointing out a lot, at last alarms German intelligence service,” the article for Die Welt writes about the Russian information war in Germany. This week president of BfV Hans-Georg Maassen says “Russian special forces are not only working on getting the information, but trying to influence on public opinion in Germany.”