After the annexation of Crimea, strict conditions for cooperation between Russian and German companies have been in force since 2014. The Prime Minister is said to have campaigned for such a project.
A company in Rostock is said to have cooperated with a Russian armaments company on several projects with the support of the state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. This emerges from research by “Welt am Sonntag”. In addition to the State Chancellery of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD), the then CDU-led Ministry of Economics is said to have been involved.
The case is explosive because the cooperation between the German Luratec AG and the company Russian Helicopters took place after the illegal Russian annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014. Russian Helicopters is said to belong to the state holding Rostec. Its boss, Sergey Chemezov, has been on an EU sanctions list since 2014.
State government ignorance
Since the annexation, there have also been Europe-wide requirements that civilian goods that can also be used for military purposes should no longer be sent to Russia. According to the report, it is not possible to say with certainty whether the cooperation violates the requirements on the basis of the available documents.
Luratec boss Hans-Jürgen Henneke did not comment on the research. A spokesman for Schwesig said that the cooperation had no indication that Rostec boss Chemesov was involved in the project. At the same time, the state government is said to have been unaware that Russian Helicopters had generated 80 percent of its sales with armaments in 2017. The International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm had collected the corresponding figures.
