By waiving sanctions against the firm behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the United States has admitted that Russia and Germany have found a way to get around these restrictions, a senior lawmaker at Germany’s The Left party told Sputnik on Thursday.
“This mechanism is protected against U.S. sanctions for now, and Washington seems to have realized that it has no viable leverage to disrupt this mechanism,” Alexander Neu, the party’s spokesman in the parliament’s defense committee, said.
According to the lawmaker, the US caving in on the crucial gas pipeline appears like a secret trade-off between Berlin and Washington, and it remains to be seen what Germany might offer the US in return.
“It looks like a deal, the content of which is still open to speculation, keyword: construction of LNG terminals on the German North Sea coast for the import of U.S. fracking gas,” Neu speculated.
He said that Germany standing up to US attempts to subordinate it entirely was a welcome surprise, but it remained to be hoped that Berlin would be able to continue defending German and European interests against US paternalism with the same consistency.
“Incidentally, this development also shows a lesson for dealing with the imperialist, US-led West: toughness and consistency can pay off in the end,” Neu said.
The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would waive sanctions on the Swiss-based Nord Stream 2 AG and its chief executive Matthias Warnig. Germany welcomed this move, after repeatedly calling US attempts to disrupt the pipeline’s construction an interference in its domestic affairs.