Forget our sense of the economic doldrums, the crashing and burning ruble, or even the relatively low level of trust in doing business with Russia following a military war, a gas war, and a war of words at Davos.  Things are looking peachy, at least for Germany’s largest industrial group Siemens, which has signed a series of blockbuster deals to build nuclear power plants in cooperation with the state atomic company, a sure sign of investment in Russia’s future economic growth.

After holding a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (interesting how it always goes unremarked upon that it is Putin whom the business leaders meet with instead of Medvedev), Siemens CEO Peter Löscher announced that the company would a new transformer factory in the Voronezh region, work together on LNG, and form a joint group with Atomenergoprom to explore nuclear power plant construction projects in Russia. 

These deals are very notable in many respects, beyond just the fact that they are occurring in such a precarious time.