Maersk service ends Danish-Russian cold war

In a new sign of a thaw in ties between Moscow and Copenhagen, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Danish counterpart, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, a new shipping line that Denmark's Maersk will use to link Russia with Latin America, the Moscow Times reported.

Relations have been chilly because of Denmark's criticism of Russia's handling of the war in Chechnya. Another irritant was Danish support of NATO's eastward expansion.

Denmark moved to heal the rift by striking a deal with Gazprom in 2006 to buy its gas from the Nord Stream pipeline, which is scheduled to begin operating late next year. Contacts intensified after Rasmussen became prime minister in April, and he has met Putin three times in the four months since November.

“I am glad we are meeting for a third time,” Rasmussen said in St Petersburg. “I think it's a testimony to the improvement of bilateral ties.”

In opening the new shipping route, the prime ministers climbed onboard a Maersk-owned ship, and Rasmussen pushed a button for a siren to mark the line's launch. Putin noted the South Korean-made ship uses the Russian navigation system Glonass.

The direct line – linking St Petersburg to Guayaquil, Ecuador – will shorten travel time for trade with Latin America to three weeks and cut costs, Putin said.

“For consumers, it means, I hope, a containment of prices for goods, including tropical fruit,” he said.

Russian exporters are counting on the line to open new markets for coal mining equipment for Chile; fertilizers for Ecuador and Columbia; and food for Central America and the Caribbean.

The ships will make calls at the ports of Bremerhaven, Germany, and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Maersk, which invested US$45 million in the project, will run six ships with a capacity for 2,500 containers. The company already handles 25 percent of Russia's container traffic to the Asia Pacific and Middle East and 20 percent of containerised cargo in the opposite direction.

The warmer ties are a remarkable shift from 2002, when a Russia-European Union event had to be moved from Copenhagen to Brussels amid a diplomatic tug of war between Russia and Denmark.

“Things are getting back to normal,” said Arkady Moshes, director for Russia studies at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki. “What is happening is … Denmark's joining the ranks of Russia's pragmatic European partners.”

(Source: Cargo News Asia)