Poland has no grounds to fear the expansion of Russian capital, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a RIA interview Friday

Poland has no grounds to fear the expansion of Russian capital, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a RIA interview Friday. The interview comes ahead of a visit to Moscow by the Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Financial cooperation between the two countries, including banking and insurance, is lagging behind their interaction in areas such as politics and culture, and their investment in each other's economies is well below the potential, Yakovenko noted. "In this connection, we deem it fundamentally important to provide a favorable climate, in politics as well as elsewhere, for Russian investors [to bring their money in] and to prevent attempts to stoke up fears of the possible expansion of Russian capital, especially in the energy sector, which allegedly puts the country's national security in jeopardy," said the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman. According to Yakovenko, even after joining the European Union, Poland has remained Russia's largest trade partner in Central and Eastern Europe. Bilateral trade turnover may surpass $7 billion, our interviewee said. "The ratification of the Protocol on the Coverage by the Russia-EU Partnership & Cooperation Agreement of Newly-Admitted EU Member States and also the ratification this past November of a new Russo-Polish intergovernmental agreement on economic cooperation prevented a legal vacuum from emerging in our trade relations," Yakovenko remarked.