Wednesday, December 15, 2021
“No more shopping in Paris”
Merz would punish those around Putin
Can Nord Stream 2 be used as leverage against the Russian military march on the Ukrainian border? The CDU politician Merz thinks nothing of it. Instead, the West should meet Putin and his oligarch entourage in person. Kremlin opponent Navalny argues very similarly.
The candidate for the CDU chairmanship, Friedrich Merz, has warned against making the commissioning of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline dependent on the progress of the Ukraine crisis. “The Russian military march on the border with Ukraine requires further sanctions from the European Union. Nord Stream 2 can hardly be used for this,” he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. The mistake was to declare the Baltic Sea pipeline a purely economic project. “Correcting this mistake will be extremely difficult because this pipeline divides Europe.”
At the moment, Nord Stream 2 is “obviously not approvable,” said Merz. However, this is due to a subsequent change in the legal basis of the European Union. “The European gas directive was changed after the construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline had already started,” he emphasized. “The effectiveness of this change in European law is disputed before the ECJ, and this purely legal argument may therefore only be short-lived.”
Instead, Merz proposed personal sanctions against “the oligarchs in the vicinity” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and their families. “If they can no longer fly to Paris and New York to shop, this may destabilize the Russian political system more than some military preparednesses,” he said.
Navalny confidante: “Let’s try something else”
A confidante of the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny argued similarly and demanded sanctions from the EU against Putin and those around him. “Appeasement has been tried many times and has been fruitless. Let’s try something else,” Leonid Volkov told journalists in Strasbourg. He referred to the reaction of the West to the Russian troop deployment on the border with Ukraine.
The US and the EU had warned of “massive” economic consequences if Russia invaded Ukraine. At the same time, Western heads of state and government tried to talk to Putin in order to avert a possible crisis. The troop deployment had raised fears that Moscow might attack the neighboring country.
Sakharov Prize for Putin opponents
“This armament on the borders of Ukraine is pure blackmail,” said Volkov. This works according to the motto: “If you don’t talk to me when President Biden doesn’t call me, I’ll cause another bloodbath in Europe,” he added, referring to Putin. “Sanction him for extortion and military build-up and stop if you withdraw the troops,” demanded Volkov.
The exiled opposition member stressed that Navalny was a “personal prisoner” of the Russian president. It is Putin’s decision when Navalny will be released. In addition to Volkov, Navalny’s daughter Daria Navalnaja is currently in Strasbourg to receive the Sakharov Prize for Democracy and Human Rights in the EU Parliament on Wednesday for her father. The well-known Kremlin critic has been in custody since January.