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© Associated Press
Reuters cited stopping the continuation of the “Turkish current” through the Balkans to Hungary as Europe’s response to the assassination attempt on Alexei Navalny. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who announced on Wednesday that she had been attacked with a poison of war, is now under heavy pressure to do something to force Moscow to stop such arrogant actions in EU countries over the past five years. Berlin said the response would be preceded by consultations with NATO and EU partners and preferred to be at the international level.
Today, Nord Stream 2 has been mentioned multiple times, including by influential members of the Merkel party, as a target whose suspension will send an indisputable signal to President Vladimir Putin. But these large-scale countermeasures could be rejected because of the economic problems they will create for Western economies and for companies doing business with Russians, Reuters explains.
In recent days, the project freeze, dubbed “Balkan Stream” by the Boyko Borissov government, has emerged as a way to sanction Ankara for continuing tensions over its drilling vessels in disputed parts of the eastern Mediterranean. In the summer, though on another occasion, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned companies to quickly withdraw from Nord Stream 2 and Turkish Stream if they wanted to get in trouble with Washington.
“Turkish Stream” was announced as a project with 4 subsea pipelines in the Black Sea, but was later reduced to one pipeline for the Turkish market and a second one, for possible consumption and transit in Southeastern Europe. In order not to look like aid to a Russian energy project, Boyko Borissov presented the billions of lev investment in the project’s extension from the Turkish border to Serbia as an extension of Bulgaria’s internal gas transmission network and began calling it “Balkan Stream”. Plans are for it to be ready by the end of 2020.
But in the meantime, Turkey has diversified its natural gas import sources and Russia has fallen to fourth place among the country’s suppliers. If the second Turkish Stream pipeline through Bulgaria is blocked, it will almost nullify Gazprom’s entire venture to bypass Ukraine from the south and supply Hungary and Central Europe on a new route.
Turkish current and southern gas corridor
“Any action in the Turkish stream will aim to virtually end the expansion in Europe,” Reuters reported today. The agency recalls that the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that the threats of sanctions against the gas pipelines were “political pressure” and “unfair competition.”
Currently, events around the Southern Gas Corridor and the liquefied gas infrastructure in Alexandroupolis, which Bulgaria joined a few days ago, are developing rapidly in the region. At the end of August, Ukraine imported gas for the first time from Greece via Bulgaria and Romania through the trans-Balkan desert gas pipeline. Russian gas transit through the country decreased by 42% in August, including due to the opening of Turkish Stream in January, when Bulgaria also began receiving agreed volumes at its southern border instead of its northern border.
Romania is also interested in how to use this route for gas from the Caspian Sea. Adevarul cited sources familiar with the events these days as saying that some 7 years ago, along the South Stream, Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Austria had established a plan to keep Romania away from gas supplies and transit from Azerbaijan. and possibly from Turkmenistan. The publication adds that in Bucharest they suspect that this group of countries, with the help of senior EU officials, managed to initiate a completely unfounded investigation into the compliance of the activities of the Romanian Transgaz with European regulations, only to not be able to participate in the Southern Gas Corridor. .
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Possible measures for Balkan Stream, which has almost been built, are likely to resemble those discussed for Nord Stream 2, a threat of sanctions for any company providing services, insurance, reinsurance, repairs and licenses for the pipeline.
But resorting to blocking these two projects will not be easy, even as Angela Merkel relentlessly defends Nord Stream 2 in Brussels and against pressure from the United States.
There is already pressure inside Germany
Now there is pressure from Germany itself. Even before Navalny’s assassination attempt in August, the German company Uniper, one of Gazprom’s financial partners in the project, acknowledged that there was a “growing probability” that it would never be completed.
“The undisguised assassination attempt by mafia-like Kremlin structures should not only concern us, it should have real consequences,” he said. Catherine Goring-Eckhart, Co-Chair of the Greens in the Bundestag. Nord Stream 2 is no longer something we can end together with Russia. “The Greens are gaining popularity in Germany and seem like a very likely partner of Merkel’s party after the upcoming elections in the fall of 2021.
Norbert Ryotgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee and candidate for leader of HDZ, told German radio on Wednesday that the completion of the pipeline was tantamount to encouraging Putin to continue with “his inhumane and arrogant policies.” “After the Navalny poisoning, we need a strong European response that Putin will understand, and the EU must work together to stop Nord Stream 2, Rötgen said.
Even Germany’s largest newspaper: the tabloid Bild, asked Merkel to reconsider her position on the project. The government can strongly condemn the poisoning of Navalny. You can tell you’re shocked. You can urge the Kremlin to explain. But as long as she continues to collude with Putin on Nord Stream 2, any such statement will be empty words, “she wrote today in the publication’s editorial post.
“Süddeutsche Zeitung” He also commented that Merkel’s harsh condemnation of the poisoning would be difficult to reconcile with her support for the project. “On Wednesday, the government said goodbye to this illusion. The illusion that one day you can impose sanctions on Russia and the next day woo it as a business partner,” said journalist Daniel Brosler.
What are the other possible sanctions according to Reuters?
– Lock assets and freeze the accounts of specific people in Russia.involved in the Navalny case; even this option now seems implausible, because the European Commission has said that an investigation must first establish which of these Russians; but the EU could punish individuals and companies responsible for the development or use of chemical weaponsregardless of their nationality and where they are
– expulsion of diplomats; This tool has already been used in the wake of the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal and her daughter in March 2018, and some leaders consider it too lenient given the scale of the Navalny scandal.
– Economic sanctions; such already exist against Russian energy, finance and arms companies, as well as a ban on doing business with annexed Crimea; Common EU sanctions require unanimity among the 27 member states, but countries like Hungary are unlikely to allow this to happen easily.
– restricting the ability of foreigners to buy Russian government bonds; currently, about 30% of ruble debt bonds (OFZ) with an equivalent of about $ 40 billion are held by non-residents of Russia; this is an important source of foreign exchange income for the budget
– exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT system; This was also considered by Americans after 2014, but was never used; the measure is very extreme because it takes Russia out of the interbank payment system and makes financial transactions with it practically impossible; Andrei Kostin, director of the second largest bank, the state-owned VTB, said such an act would amount to declaring war.
