Only one thing is clear about the future of Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that bypasses Ukraine’s transit system: Ukraine and its ally, the United States, are determined to stop it, even though construction is 94% complete.
They are rallying the opposition and driving home their argument that the $11 billion pipeline is a threat to Ukraine, European energy independence and the security of the entire region.
Ukraine’s argument found strong support in Washington, to the dismay of Moscow, Berlin and Paris — key stakeholders in the project that will double their existing natural gas transit capacity to 110 billion cubic meters.
Washington has slapped on sanctions that have halted construction, raising questions about whether Moscow has the equipment and technical know-how to complete the project in the Baltic Sea.
The Swiss company Allseas Group abandoned its work on the pipeline at the end of December when U.S. sanctions were announced.
Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom claims it can complete the final stage by itself and is looking at options — including bringing a vessel into the Baltic Sea all the way from its current location in the South China Sea.
But not everyone is convinced the boat is up to the task, or that Russia can get the job done by itself, and Gazprom has admitted that completion is probably delayed until the end of 2020. Ukraine can smell victory, and its lawmakers and diplomats — with America’s help — say they are ready to make sure the project becomes an unattainable pipe dream for Moscow.
Nord Stream resistance
Ukraine — a country at war with Russia since 2014, when Moscow brazenly seized the peninsula of Crimea and attacked its eastern region of the Donbas — has other allies in opposing Nord Stream 2.
The Baltic States, Georgia and the United Kingdom have also protested, while Germany and France have consistently supported the project.
But Ukraine, which stands to lose out on about $3 billion annually in lost transit fees on Russian gas when the pipeline (which complements Nord Stream 1) is fully operational, has voiced the loudest opposition.
“It is definitely a threat… and not only to Ukraine but to the EU also,” said Oleksiy Honcharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and delegate to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.
“For the Russian Federation, energy is not only about economics — firstly it is leverage and a weapon,” Honcharenko said, adding that sanctions have hurt the project badly, but that Ukraine must now work with Denmark to stop it entirely.
Svitlana Zalishchuk, a former lawmaker who now serves as a foreign policy adviser to Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, said that Russia would be allowed to radically undermine the energy security of the entire region if the project is completed.
“Europe would give significant control over its pipe to a country that invests money from energy resources into undermining European elections, attacking strategic infrastructure, and conducting operations against EU citizens,” she said. “It is not difficult to see Nord Stream 2 as a trojan horse.”
Hanna Hopko was a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of its foreign affairs committee for almost half a decade between 2014 and 2019. She saw Nord Stream 2 as her nemesis during this time.
The lawmaker recalls that stopping the pipeline was a key goal during her time in public office. In one August 2019 letter to U. S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U. S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Hopko asked American lawmakers to prioritize legislation that would sanction the project before its completion.
Those sanctions came into effect at the end of December 2019, weeks before the pipeline was due to be finished and one month after Hopko left office.
She views Nord Stream 2 as an “existential threat” to Ukraine that attempts to divide the European Union and NATO. The pipeline will help Russia to “export corruption” and is “part of the hybrid war of Putin’s Russia against the West,” she said, in which profits from oil and gas sales strengthen the Kremlin and weaken Europe’s political will to oppose its aggression.
Energy security
Critics of the Russian-German joint project — which aims to send natural gas from Siberian fields into the EU through Germany each year — are confident that sanctions can work.
The delay alone gave Ukraine and its allies an edge in recent gas transit talks with Moscow, according to Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, a research fellow at Harvard University and former European Energy Security Advisor at the U.S. Department of State. He is one of many experts worried about the pipeline.
“Not only would the project do immediate damage to the Ukrainian economy…but the pipeline could result in increased aggression in eastern Ukraine,” he told the Kyiv Post.
At the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 15, U. S. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to sanctioning the project, which Schmitt labels as a vehicle for spreading “strategic corruption and malign influence.”
Brouillette also appeared to criticize some major countries in Europe for not taking the region’s energy independence seriously enough: “It’s distressing to Americans that… Germany in particular and others in Europe would rely upon the Russians to such a great degree,” he said, as reported by Bloomberg.
U.S. President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly singled out Germany for criticism, saying that the country pays billions of dollars to Russia for natural gas while benefiting from U.S. protection. He wants Europe to meet its growing demand for gas by importing liquefied natural gas from the U.S. instead of Russia.
Schmitt says that the U.S. is providing strong evidence to support the assertion that it is committed to “supporting the national security interests of its European partners and allies, rather than motivated by some kind of mercantilist desire to eliminate Russian energy resources.”
“The U. S. is being generous beyond belief in its support for Europe,” said Glen Grant, a defense expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future. “Europe has to wake up… it has been free riding on the U.S. for too long in matters like energy and defense,” adding that Nord Stream 2 undermines current sanctions on the Kremlin and lends it credibility as a “country you can do business with”.
Slow progress
Gazprom has few options when it comes to completing Nord Stream 2 alone, but analysts such as Schmitt believe that one of them may have just started a long journey to the Baltic Sea — by way of Singapore.
On Feb. 16, the pipe-laying vessel Akademik Cherskiy left the port of Nakhodkha on Russia’s Pacific Coast. Industry experts predict the boat is headed for Danish waters, even though it is debatable that the ship is suited for the task.
“It’s going to be a very long delay, because Russia doesn’t have the technology,” Brouilette told Bloomberg in Munich. Schmitt recalls that the head of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation recently admitted that it could take six years for his country to develop, build and deploy it’s own vessel that is sophisticated enough to easily complete the pipeline.
Grant has a different view: “Russia can probably complete the pipeline themselves but possibly not in a hurry. Ukraine needs to lobby the EU and other nations, and if possible use the courts… to force the pipeline’s closure.”
Honcharenko said: “It will now be much harder to complete the pipeline. Maybe even impossible. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
