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** U.S. "Driving Stake Through Heart" of German-Russian Pipeline ([link removed])
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by Soeren Kern • December 28, 2020 at 5:00 am
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* "We continue to call on Russia to cease using its energy resources for coercive purposes. Russia uses its energy export pipelines to create national and regional dependencies on Russian energy supplies, leveraging these dependencies to expand its political, economic, and military influence, weaken European security, and undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. These pipelines also reduce European energy diversification, and hence weaken European energy security. — U.S. Department of State, "Protecting Europe's Energy Security Act," October 20, 2020.
* On December 24, the Kremlin admitted that U.S. sanctions may succeed in preventing completion of the pipeline. The U.S. government is now readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions that could deal a fatal blow to the project, according to the Reuters news agency.
* A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. Pictured: The Nord Stream 2 landfall facility in Lubmin, Germany, on September 7, 2020. (Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany "captive" to Russia for its energy supplies.

Trump has been especially critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in opposition to the United States and many Eastern European countries, has doggedly pursued the pipeline project, which would funnel billions of dollars to Russia at a time that Germany is free-riding on the U.S. defense umbrella that protects Germany from that same Russia.

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