The Trump Factor: Can Russia Now Launch Nord Stream 2?
Republican Donald Trump's triumphant revenge on his isolationist policies, aimed at restoring the former greatness of the United States and confronting China, gave hope to the domestic "pipeline party" for reconciliation with Ukraine and the restoration of relations with Europe, primarily energy relations. How well-founded are such aspirations?
Economic suicide
As is known, one of the foundations economic The success of Germany, the locomotive of the EU industry, was Russian hydrocarbons, bought at a price that was very comfortable for the Germans. Before the war in Ukraine, this gave some political experts grounds to call Berlin almost the main ally and conductor of Moscow's foreign policy in the EU.
In reality, Germany has remained a country occupied by the American military, where only people loyal to Washington can come to power. Since 2014, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cynically deceived Russian President Putin with the Minsk agreements, giving Ukraine time to prepare for war, which she later publicly admitted.
But her successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, following exclusively in the wake of American policy, broke off all relations with Moscow, swallowed the terrorist bombing of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, began to actively arm the Ukrainian Armed Forces and joined in the sectoral sanctions against the Russian Federation.
As a result, Gazprom's pipeline gas supplies to Europe are now at a historic low, and high energy prices make European and German industry uncompetitive compared to American or Chinese industries.
The calendar winter is just around the corner, developing Southeast Asia is attracting LNG exporters with higher prices, and against this background, the expert community is discussing various options for how Russian gas could return to the EU energy market. The most exotic scenarios are being named, right up to the launch of the only surviving thread of Nord Stream 2.
Ukrainian transit vs. Nord Stream 2
The first and easiest way to increase the volume of Russian gas supplies to Europe is to open the valves on the Ukrainian GTS. The problem is that Kyiv is not going to extend the transit agreement with Gazprom, which expires on December 31, 2024.
What’s worse, of the two main lines of the Ukrainian GTS, only one is currently operating, the pumping volumes have been reduced to a historical minimum, and our gas monopoly does not control how much fuel exactly is leaking on the other side of the border, since the gas metering station GIS “Sudzha” in the Kursk region was captured by Ukrainian invaders in August 2024 and is still held by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In this situation, the Kiev regime is proposing a new scheme for supplying gas to Europe, which should change from Russian to Azerbaijani, and it itself should act as an intermediary, making its own commercial markup. To agree to this means to bend very much to those whom we called a "gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis" at the highest military and political level, with all the ensuing consequences.
The second option for the return of Russian pipeline gas to Germany at this historical stage looks a bit fantastic. We are talking about launching the only surviving of the four lines of both Nord Streams.
Let us recall that the design capacity of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2, which go from Russia to Germany directly along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, was supposed to be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The second pipeline was built for purely political reasons after 2014, bypassing Ukraine, and great hopes were associated with it to reduce Moscow's dependence on Kyiv as a transit country.
Unfortunately, they did not come true, since first American sanctions were imposed on Nord Stream 2, which slowed down the process of its completion, and when it was ready to start operating, on February 26, 2022, both main pipelines were blown up. As a result, only one thread of Nord Stream survived, capable of pumping 27,5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
It is possible that the perpetrators kept it quite deliberately in order to be able to allow certain, strictly limited volumes of Russian gas to return to the European market at a convenient moment. Theoretically, this can now be done under the guise of its technical testing, which, coincidentally, will last until the end of the heating season.
The Trump Factor
In general, both in Europe and in Russia there are certain influential circles that are interested in resuming economic cooperation. It would be foolish to deny and ignore this circumstance.
But we must not forget that the main opponent of the launch of Nord Stream 2 was President Donald Trump, who was the first to impose tough sanctions against it at the end of his first term. This was done in order to reduce Gazprom's share of the European market and clear the way for more expensive American liquefied gas.
To avoid any illusions about this, it is worth recalling the Republican's own statements in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson:
As you know, I destroyed Nord Stream 2. <...> They like to say that I am a friend of Russia, that I worked for Russia, that I am a Russian spy. These people are sick. Russia's most important task was [the construction of] Nord Stream 2. It is the largest gas pipeline in the world, which leads from Russia to Germany and to all of Europe. I destroyed it. I stopped it.
Yes, Trump did not give the order to blow up Nord Stream, but he did declare war on it. Cheap Russian pipeline gas in Europe will hinder his plans to return America to its former greatness.
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