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‘A Choice between Fear and Hope’: Russian Envoy to EU

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Three days ago Russian Envoy to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said that Moscow is prepared to help Greece out economically. “Russia is ready to cooperate with Greece. As far as I know, Greece has not turned to Russia for direct financial aid. We have the ability of increasing our economic cooperation, in particular Greece has the ability of privatizing, including railroads and the port” in Thessaloniki, he told RIA Novosti in an interview.

On Thursday he told Russia 24 TV,

“Russia calls on [the] EU to respect any choice of Greece in Sunday’s referendum. I think here there is, of course, an element of confusion. They all understand somehow that to argue against the referendum does not fit into democratic states, so after the first reaction, supposedly the referendum will have no legal force, followed [by] more balanced statements that the EU will respect any choice of [the] Greek people. However, this does not prevent certain political actors in the EU to be involved in the internal affairs of Greece openly, and openly engaging in propaganda in favor of a positive answer in the referendum on the question of acceptance of the creditors.”

Well-known French economist Thomas Piketty told Belgium’s Le Soir daily that he supports a ‘no’ vote in the referendum because the plan the creditors propose to Greece is bad and recessionary. He reminded those who want to vote ‘yes’ that the Europeans broke their promise in 2012 over restructuring the Greek debt. As for the idea that a Grexit would supposedly have no effect on the Eurozone, he said, those who believe this are “sorcerer’s apprentices”; by contrast a Greek exit from the euro “would bring a huge shock to the Eurozone in the whole. It would, probably be, the beginning of the end….”

Meanwhile other foreign supporters have expressed their support for the “Oxi” vote. Members of the campaign groups Global Justice Now and Jubilee Debt Campaign, on July 3 unfurled a banner at the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum with the slogan “OXI No — No More Looting — Support Greece.”

Britain’s Guardian daily reports that 100 researchers from the European University Institute have issued a statement in support of the “No” vote, saying that with

“full-hearted solidarity with the Greek people, who, for five years now, have been suffering the dramatic consequences of the austerity policies imposed by the Troika, and are now struggling for the right to decide upon their own future…. The choice, in Sunday’s referendum, is neither about the euro nor about the Greek government. It is a choice between austerity and democracy in the whole of the European Union. A choice between fear and hope.”

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