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German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier takes up the narrative imposed by Russian propaganda that Germany should atone for the crimes of the Nazis only to the Russian Federation, believes Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnik.
In discussing the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier distorted the historical truth about the events of World War II. On February 7, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, told Ukrinform about this.
His comment is about Steinmeier’s interview with the Rheinische Post, which was published on February 6 on the German president’s website. Speaking in favor of the completion of the gas pipeline, Steinmeier said that “in recent years, relations in the energy sector have become almost the last bridge between Russia and Europe.” He noted the “very checkered” history of relations between the FRG and the Russian Federation, and recalled World War II, which killed “more than 20 million people in the former Soviet Union.” “This does not justify false Russian policy today, but we have no right to lose sight of this larger context,” Steinmeier said.
Melnik believes that the German president “is resuming the narrative, imposed by Russian propaganda for decades, that Germany should assume its historical responsibility and atone for its barbaric crimes of the Nazi occupation only before Russia.”
The Ukrainian diplomat describes the comparison of the USSR only with Russia as “an absolutely unacceptable distortion of history and a direct disregard for the exorbitant sacrifices of other peoples”, mainly the Ukrainian.
“If, during his visit to Kiev, Mr. Steinmeier had visited the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II on the slopes of the Dnieper, he would have learned that it was the Ukrainian people who suffered colossal losses during the Nazi invasion and the war unleashed by the Third Reich against extermination and slavery, “Miller explained.
He stressed that when on June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Germany started a war against the USSR, it was not Moscow that was the target of massive bomb attacks, but Ukrainian cities such as Kiev, Zhitomir, Odessa, Sevastopol.
“It is this broader context that must be taken into account before cynically using such sensitive historical arguments for the Nord Stream 2 laundering, which already today carries a direct threat of a new hot phase of Russian aggression, which does not stop day no night for the seventh year in a row and brings incalculable pain and suffering to the Ukrainian land, “said the diplomat.
On February 5, the head of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party, Armin Laschet, said that Germany should not refuse to support the Nord Stream 2 project. German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke of her readiness for a dialogue with Washington on the construction of the gas pipeline.
Nord Stream 2 project, chaired by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, – a gas pipeline that should connect Russia with Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The length of the route is more than 1200 km, the capacity of the new gas pipeline will be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The project cost is reported to be € 9.9 billion, it is financed by Russia’s Gazprom and five European companies: Anglo-Dutch Shell, German Wintershall and Uniper, French Engie and Austrian OMV.
Authorities in the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia consider Nord Stream 2 a threat to Europe’s energy security.
Construction of the gas pipeline began in 2018. In December 2019, construction froze when the United States imposed sanctions on European contractors involved in the project. At that time, 93% of the pipeline was completed, reported the official operator of the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 AG.
A year later, on December 11, 2020, construction resumed. Until the construction of two gas pipeline chains is completed, a total of 160 kilometers remain “with a little,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 17.
On December 11, the United States Senate, following the House of Representatives, supported the country’s defense budget project for 2021, which provides for tougher sanctions against Nord Stream 2, but at that time the President of the States United, Donald Trump, vetoed it. On January 1, 2021, the US Congress “easily rejected” Trump’s veto. 81 senators voted in favor, 13 against.
On January 19, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. In particular, the sanctions affected the Russian ship Fortuna and its owner, the KVT-RUS company, as well as to the Rustanker company, the Maxim Gorky tanker and the Sierra tanker for the transportation of crude. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry welcomed this decision, and the Russian “Gazprom” allowed for the first time the possibility of suspending the implementation or completely canceling the Nord Stream 2 project.
However, on 24 January it emerged that the Russian pipe laying vessel Fortuna had resumed construction of the Nord Stream 2 in Danish waters. In 2020, the pipelayer laid 2.6 km of pipes in German waters, about 120 km left unfinished in Danish waters and about 28 km in Germany.
According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, US President Joe Biden considers the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be “bad business for Europe.”
The Handelsblatt newspaper wrote on February 1 that Biden could lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 if he gets assurances that Russia will not use the pipeline against Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The State Department denied this information, saying they would hamper the construction of Nord Stream 2 not just with sanctions.
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