EU Sanctions On Russia Would Be 'Catastrophe' For More Than 6,000 German Firms

REUTERS/Francois LenoirGermany's Chancellor Angela Merkel looks through her window as she arrives at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels March 21, 2014.

BERLIN (Reuters) - If an escalation of Europe's stand-off with Moscow over Ukraine results in economic sanctions, more than 6,000 German companies who do business with Russia would suffer catastrophic losses, Germany's main trade body has warned.

"About 6,200 German companies are engaged in Russia, some of them very strongly," Anton Boerner, head of the BGA exporters' body, told the Dortmunder Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper in an interview published on Friday. "For them, economic sanctions would be a real catastrophe."

European Union leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel who played a leading role in the frustrated attempt to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin not to annex Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, have retaliated with travel bans and asset freezes on 33 people close to Putin and are preparing economic sanctions.

Boerner said energy prices would rise if the crisis endures but Moscow was unlikely to cut off all of its energy deliveries to Germany, which imports more than 30 percent of its oil and gas from Russia.

Germany's "wise men" council of economic advisers said on Thursday the Ukraine crisis was the biggest threat to global growth, and especially Germany, because of Russia's importance of an energy exporter.

The BGA said last week that while a trade conflict would be damaging for Germany, "for the Russian economy it would be life-threatening." Bilateral trade with Russia, which totals about 76 billion euros, fell last year.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; Editing by Noah Barkin)