The Washington Post: Germany is forced to take revenge on Putin, forgetting about the benefits of “Nord Stream-2”
Olaf Scholz. Photo: Gugliermo Mangiapane / Reuters
Columnist Anthony Faiola, in an article for The Washington Post, said that European allies are forcing the new German government not to launch the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in order to take revenge on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As the author of the material notes, the opponents of the project – the EU countries and the US administration – are forcing the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to stop the work of Nord Stream 2 if Russia continues its “aggression” in Ukraine. In essence, the article says, they are asking him to risk the country's energy future, forget about the benefits of the pipeline and make it a “club against Putin.” In addition, critics of the project believe that the Germans “voluntarily put their neck under Putin's yoke.”
Fayola concludes that the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is trapped in the European Union. German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock also exerts pressure on him. If Scholz decides to mothball Nord Stream 2, it will alienate the government from German industry, which is counting on this energy source, said Nikos Tsafos, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Earlier, the Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection of Germany, Robert Habek, called Nord Stream 2 a geopolitical mistake of Germany. He noted that all EU countries, except Germany and Austria, have always been against the construction of the pipeline.
The construction of Nord Stream 2 was completed on September 10. Two lines of the gas pipeline, each 1,224 kilometers long, will run from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The gas pipeline's capacity will be 55 billion cubic meters per year. The filling of the first line of the object began on October 4. The second string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline began to be filled with gas on 17 December.
Before starting work, the pipeline must be certified by the German and European regulatory authorities. On December 16, the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) announced that the procedure would not be completed by the end of the first half of 2022, although it was previously planned to do this by January 8, 2022.
