"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." 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.