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Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing added himself to a growing list of German executives and politicians warning of dire economic consequences if Russian energy supplies are cut off.
Already grappling with soaring inflation, Europe's biggest economy would face “a further deterioration of the situation if there's a stop to imports or deliveries of Russian oil and natural gas,” Sewing told a press briefing Monday where he spoke in his role as head of a German banking lobby.
“A clear recession in Germany would presumably be inevitable,” he said.
The warning follows images purportedly showing Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian troops that have triggered calls for harsher sanctions across the European Union -- including on oil and gas. Germany and several other member-states that depend on Russian gas have so far opposed penalizing the energy sector.
Read More: Horrors of Bucha Push Europe Toward New Sanctions on Russia
Other German politicians and executives -- including Finance Minister Christian Lindner and ThyssenKrupp CEO Martina Merz -- spoke in similar terms to Sewing at the weekend, before the allegations of atrocities in Ukraine were widely publicized.
“If it was to come to an import embargo, and you have to keep this in mind, then we could be talking about inflation that's at least temporarily, is temporarily in the double digits,” Sewing said. “But we'll permanently have a phenomenon that we all haven't seen in the last 30 years and that's longer-term inflation.”
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