Retaliatory sanctions from the US and EU have been substantial, consisting of targeted travel restrictions and asset freezes, an embargo on the breakoff states of Crimea and Sevastopol, restrictions on Russian bank access to European capital markets, and a ban on weapons imports and exports. In 2014, it annexed Crimea to international, European Union (EU), and German condemnation. If Russia does invade eastern Ukraine, it would not be the first time that Russia has violated Ukrainian sovereignty. At this point, Scholz needs to decide, or declare, where he actually stands on the issue, so long as the pipeline project still has deterrent rather than just retaliatory potential. These trips come on the heels of an unsuccessful visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Russia just a few days ago, and a meeting between the Baerbock and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that had reportedly been delayed in part because Baerbock could no longer commit to sacrificing the pipeline. He is scheduled to visit Moscow and Kiev this week. Even if this is the case, however, Scholz himself has still only gone so far as to accept discussion of whether the pipeline will be discussed as a potential retaliatory mechanism, rather than how to deploy it as such if the situation arises. Taken with his own tentative openness to discussing Nord Stream 2 in the context of possible and increasingly likely Russian aggression, and with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s linkage of the two issues last year, Scholz’s recent equivocations might actually indicate acquiescence to if not a full embrace of Biden’s policy. After their February 7 meeting, United States (US) President Joe Biden repeated his administration’s policy that, in the event of invasion “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2.” Scholz, however, met such direct statements with the noncommittal assertion that the US and Germany are “absolutely united.” Details or direct mention of the pipeline did not follow. In response to a question about his current position on whether he would consider blocking the Nord Stream 2 project were Russia to invade Ukraine, Scholz recently stated, “It is clear that there will be a high cost and that all this will have to be discussed if there is a military intervention against Ukraine.” More recently, however, he seemed to backtrack again. More recently, however, his rhetoric has shifted from defiant dismissal to a tentative embrace of the relationship between Moscow’s anticipated attack on Ukraine and its hopes for an enlarged presence in western European gas markets. But it is a question that is different from another question that we touched upon earlier, and that is that we talk about what we can do to ensure that we will never find ourselves in a situation where the integrity of Ukraine is violated. It has been advancing to such an extent that the pipeline has been put in place and it is just a partial issue that needs clarification that has to do with the unbundling of the enshrined in European legislation…. Nord Stream 2 is a private business project. As late as December, he shot down any connection between the pipeline and the situation in Ukraine: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has wavered recently on the question of Nord Stream 2, the controversial Baltic gas pipeline project connecting the Russian terminal at Ust-Luga to the German port in Lubmin and, from there, Western Europe. This is part of a series on the Ukraine Crisis.
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