The Russian Presidency of CBSS (Council for the Baltic Sea States) will be used as a one of many means to join forces with international partner organisations to create new projects in the Baltic Sea Region. In an interview in the Amber Bridge Magazine Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov elaborates on a future more active Russian role in the area. One of the main CBSS tasks according to the Minister is: “to create a large scale innovation fund for direct investments through PPP (Public Private Partnerships) in order to strengthen of regional economies and resolve infrastructure problems in Russia”.
Regarding the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) Russia will not get involved in that project, Mr Lavrov states in the interview: “I would like to stress once again the talks is not about Russian involvement in the EU Baltic strategy. On the contrary, we have reached an understanding with our partners that the platforms for the implementations of the projects shall be well-known multilateral cooperation formats, such as the CBSS, the Northern Dimension, HELCOM, and, possibly, the Baltic Sea trans-border cooperation program for 2014-2020 on condition Russia joins its implementation”.
You can read the whole interview here:
http://www.amberbridge.org/userfiles/file/amberjournal/issue7/eng/6_page.pdf