German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas went to Moscow yesterday to meet with his Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the occasion of 50 years of Germany’s opening a new chapter in relations to the then-Soviet Union “Ostpolitik“ offensive of German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Among economic cooperation agreements signed in the wake of this diplomatic offensive, gas for pipeline projects were signed: Russian gas pumped to Western Germany in pipelines delivered by German industry. Workers of Eastern Germany took part in the construction of the pipelines too.
German-Russian relations are now overshadowed by the sanctions which the Western world has launched against Moscow on the Ukrainian pretext, and an acute crisis is in the making because of geopolitical attempts to sabotage the ongoing construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. Since there is no substitute for the gas from Russia for Germany’s industry, the German government has resisted all U.S. attempts to cancel the pipeline project, but it has become increasingly difficult to keep the project going because of new threats from the war hawks in the Congress of “fatal“ U.S. sanctions against Baltic ports of Germany.
Both Maas and Lavrov agreed to keep the project alive and prevent a repetition of the cancellation of the planned Bourgas-Alexandropoulis pipeline from the Bulgarian Black Sea coast to the Greek western coast, because the Obama Administration arm-twisted the Bulgarian government into walking away from the project some years ago.
Maas also discussed Syria, Lebanon, and Libya with Lavrov on his Moscow agenda. It is said that Germany sympathizes with the Russian initiative to see Saad Hariri at the top of a new Lebanese government in Beirut, to stabilize Lebanon after the Aug. 4 giant detonation of ammonium nitrate in Beirut’s port.
