It was the first time a cabinet minister in Merkel’s government explicitly linked the fate of the Baltic Sea pipeline to Russia’s cooperation in an inquiry.
“More than 100 companies from 12 European countries are part of Nord Stream 2, about half of those from Germany,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “I certainlyThe German military’s finding this week that Navalny was attacked with a novichok nerve agent has put pressure on Merkel’s controversial backing of Nord Stream 2, which will ship Russian gas directly to Europe’s largest economy.
Later in the day, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is also the head of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, drew a similar link between Russian cooperation and the gas pipeline in comments to Reuters on Sunday. Asked whether Germany is now ready to sanction the project, she said “what happens now depends on the behavior of the Russian side.”
Some top opposition lawmakers have demanded the project be halted, and NATO this week condemned Moscow for the “appalling” attempted assassination of Navalny. However, there is still little appetite within Merkel’s coalition to abandon Nord Stream.that neither Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc nor her Social Democratic partner is likely to rally around the demand, according to three Bundestag officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
Russia has been linked to two different poisonings carried out in the U.K., with novichok suspected in the attempted murder in 2018 of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil., calling the use of chemical weapons “pure gangsterism.”