This May Be Part Of Putin’s Plan To Leave Germans Freezing In The Dark

You’ve heard a lot about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which transports natural gas from Russia to  Germany. It is completed and tested but has never been formally opened due to U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia resulting from the War in Ukraine. But, fewer people are familiar with the fact that there is already an operating Nord Stream pipeline that has operated since 2011 (Nord Stream 1).

The purpose of Nord Stream 2 was to provide added capacity to Germany and to replace some existing pipelines that run through Ukraine. Yet, Nord Stream 1 has been a critical link in the global energy supply network for years. Like any pipeline, it needs to be shut down periodically for maintenance.

The Nord Stream 1 pipeline was shut down on July 11 for this reason, as described in this article. Of course, this comes at a critical time.

Russia had already reduced the flow of natural gas through Nord Stream 1 by 40% to send a message to Germany about its anti-Russian stance. Russia has also reduced energy supplies to Finland, Poland, and Romania for various reasons, including Finland’s plans to join NATO and Poland’s role as a weapons transshipment point for the flow of advanced weaponry to Ukraine.

The repair situation with Nord Stream 1 is further complicated by the fact that one of the main components under repair is a turbine, which is being repaired in Canada. Ukraine had insisted that Canada not return the turbine to Russia as part of the economic war on Russia. Meanwhile, Germany was pleading with Canada to return the turbine so the Nord Stream 1 repair work could be completed and the natural gas flow turned on again.

For those who believe in conspiracy theories (we don’t, but they are fun to think about), the internet outage in Canada described in the above article was due to a cyber-attack launched by Russia because of Canada’s failure to return the turbine. Anyway, Canada is now in the process of delivering the turbine to Russia, and the maintenance work on Nord Stream 1 is expected to be complete by late July.

End of story? Not quite.

The big issue now is whether Russia actually will resume the flow of natural gas even when the pipeline is back in working order. Will Russia maintain the 40% supply reduction? Cut the supply even further? Even cut off the supply completely until Germany stops shipping weapons to Ukraine?

No one outside the Kremlin knows the answers. We do know this is a perfect illustration of the interconnection between economic warfare and kinetic warfare.

It also illustrates that sanctions are not hurting Russia; they are hurting the EU and the U.S. The longer the war on the ground continues and the longer the sanctions are in place, the worse the global economy will perform.

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