“There is nothing against it”
Kretschmer calls for repairs to Nord Stream 1
06/22/2023, 9:30 p.m
Before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Saxony’s Prime Minister fought for the commissioning of the controversial Nord Stream 2. After both gas pipelines were blown up in September, Kretschmer is now demanding the repair of Nord Stream 1. We should get on with it now, says the CDU politician.
Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer has spoken out in favor of repairing the destroyed Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline as soon as possible. There is “no reason at all why we shouldn’t start securing and repairing this pipeline now,” Kretschmer told Welt TV.
Even before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Kretschmer was one of the loudest advocates of Nord Stream 2. Now the CDU politician is demanding information from the federal government about the background to the attack on the pipelines. Kretschmer said people in Germany would like to know what the federal government knows about the fact that the US foreign intelligence service, the CIA, has warned of an attack. According to the Washington Post, in June 2022 the CIA learned of an alleged plan by Ukraine for such an attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has denied his government’s involvement in the sabotage actions.
Nord Stream 1 much more damaged
Most recently, an international team of journalists from RTL, the Danish television station TV2, the Danish newspaper “Ekstra Bladet” and the French daily newspaper “Libération” received footage of the destroyed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It can be seen that the Nord Stream 2 branch A explosion caused far less damage than the somewhat later Nord Stream 1 pipeline explosion, eighty kilometers to the north.
The two Nord Stream pipelines were damaged by several explosions in the night of September 25th to 26th, 2022. At this point, Nord Stream 1 was no longer supplying gas to Germany; the pipeline had been shut down by the Russian side: after a maintenance break in the summer of 2022, Moscow imposed a delivery stop. Although Nord Stream 2 was already filled with gas, it never went into operation. Both pipelines consist of two strands each. In Nord Stream 1, both pipelines were damaged, in Nord Stream 2 only line B. To this day, it is unclear who is responsible for the attacks.
Kretschmer: Maintain contact with Russian civil society
In an interview with Welt TV, the Prime Minister of Saxony also criticized the way Russia was dealt with in general: “If we believe in our Western values, which we stand up for so much, then we also have to believe that people in Russia will eventually be convinced of them and want exactly that”, demanded Kretschmer. He would therefore “not let the contact with civil society break down so much” and “try that we still have an exchange with each other, that we have options for the future”.
However, Kretschmer also made it clear that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine must not be successful. “Ukraine is a sovereign country and the attack is a big crime. You have to help this country, but it’s also about stopping this death and limiting the danger it poses to us in Europe.”