The poisonous attack on Alexei Navalny – Is the umbilical cord being cut in Europe?

Shot that down a bomb in Berlin when German doctors last week found traces of the novitsjok chemical weapon in the blood and urine of Russian regime critic Alexei Navalny. The shock of having identified the poisoned weapon was even greater than the fact that Navalny was actually poisoned nearly three weeks ago, when he met with supporters in Omsk, Siberia. Because novitsjok’s discovery points directly to the top of the Russian security services FSB and GRU, because it is almost inconceivable that others would have access to the substance, which is part of the Russian chemical arsenal.

Since Navalny is located in a Berlin hospital, it is now a German responsibility. When German doctors found traces of the poison in Navalny last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel immediately called an emergency meeting in her internal cabinet. After the meeting, Merkel expressed quite directly that she believes that the Russian state, through President Vladimir Putin, must be behind Navalny’s assassination attempt. It was also clear to her that such an open provocation against the norms and rules of international politics had to be punished.

Straw. Umbilical cord. Livline. Not only dear children have many names. And the child in this case has the icy name of the North Sea 2. He is not, as we understand it, a child of love. It is rather the result of a sensible marriage, and it is a gas pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that is 1,222 km long. long, and goes from Narva Bay in Russia to Lubmin in Germany. The gas pipeline was due to be completed this year and would link Russia economically and politically with Germany and the EU. It should guarantee Germany and the EU a fast and efficient energy supply, 25 percent of Germany’s energy comes from gas and Russia a safe and abundant access to the euro. It was a mutual benefit for both parties. In a normal world.

But now the pressure increases on Merkel to cancel cooperation in the North Sea 2. Both from the opposition and from her own party, the CDU, comes the demand. The triggering cause is the Navalny assassination attempt, but it is also pointed out that gas is not the energy of the future and if Russia is a reliable energy partner. When Russia breaks the customs of the people and wants to kill enemies both at home and abroad with such an obviously provocative weapon as the novitiate, how can one trust Russia as a reliable supplier of gas? Couldn’t Russia, in a heightened political situation, participate in political blackmail by turning off the taps?

Double agent Sergei Skripal was also tried to be murdered with a novitiate two years ago in Britain, and two GRU military intelligence agents were finally identified as the perpetrators. At the time, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from the EU and the US (Norway also expelled one) and Russia responded by expelling a similar number of Western diplomats from Russia. And because the number of Western diplomats in Russia after this round of expulsions is approaching a critically low level, a new round of expulsions is difficult. Also update North Sea 2 as punishment.

But it is complicated. There are only 150 km to go before the cable reaches ground in Germany. Almost ten billion euros have been spent on construction, approx. half is invested in Russian state gas giant Gazprom and the rest in European power producers. And Russia will lose between $ 5-7 billion a year in revenue, if the project is shelved, according to the Russian financial website finan.ru. It will have a major impact on the Russian economy, which has already given Russians less purchasing power in the last five years.

If Germany does Seriously about shelving the project, it will be a dramatic reversal of a policy of relaxation and confidence followed by German leaders since Willy Brandt began his cheese policy in the early 1970s. It was based on confidence in the East. and a nascent economic cooperation, in times of the Cold War. If Germany stopped the North Sea project 2, it would be because Putin’s Russia is believed to be a gangster state that cannot be trusted.

In America the people will cheer because Donald Trump has pushed to sell American shale gas to Germany, instead of Russian gas, and is threatening to impose sanctions on his ally Germany for doing so. In Poland, Ukraine and in the Baltic countries, people will rejoice because they perceive the gas pipeline as a historical betrayal of them, and because the gas will now leave their territories, so they will lose income.

Navalny’s assassination attempt may be the last straw. And the case that ended Willy Brandt’s philosophy of cheese politics. While the thoughts – if not the thanks – go to Putin, the services are no longer so secret.