Nord Stream 2: will the project be cancelled over Navalny poisoning?

 Voices are being raised in Germany and especially among members of the ruling party CDU to end the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline project after powerful critic of the Putin government, Alexey Navalny, was posioned with the "Novitchok"-agent in Tomsk, writes german newpaper BILD:

"The German government can condemn the poisoning of Putin critic Navalny "in the strongest terms". She can be "dismayed". It can "urge" the Kremlin to explain itself.

But as long as she does common cause with Putin on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, all explanations will be empty words.

 

It is no longer understandable why the Chancellor defended the project on Tuesday, although European partners, the opposition in the Bundestag and even experts from her own Union faction have been warning against it for years.

Contrary to what the Chancellor said, Nord Stream 2 is not an “economically driven project” and cannot be seen as “decoupled” from the poison attack on Navalny.

Vladimir Putin sees the gas pipeline to Germany as the most important strategic weapon against Europe. And as an inexhaustible tap in the war against his own people.

If the federal government does not cancel the construction of Nord Stream 2, we will soon use Nord Stream 2 to finance Putin's Novichok attacks."

Meanwhile the russian propaganda apparatus insinuates that Navalny has been poisoned in Germany:

"Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the chemical nerve agent Novichok! The federal government announced on Wednesday. And the sharp condemnation and the demand on Moscow, after extensive investigation, followed immediately.

But in Russia they don't want to hear about the allegations. Quite the opposite: From the highest level, you deny yourself guilty, point your finger at Berlin and come up with an incredible theory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet commented himself, but lets his loyal friends speak:

▶ ︎ Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said in the evening in Moscow: "Before the patient was brought to Berlin in accordance with all international standards, a whole complex of analyzes was carried out in our country, in which no toxic substances were identified."

Means: Navalny was only poisoned with Novitschok in Germany.

▶ ︎ Ivan Ridionov, chief strategist of the Russian state broadcaster “RT Deutsch” in Berlin, made a similar statement. He stated that the federal government was “urgently called upon to explain the Novichok Fund. Who had access to the patient after landing in Berlin? ”He later followed up on conspiracy theory:“ Strangely enough, nobody in Germany asks these simple questions. ”Not even why it takes a Bundeswehr laboratory a fortnight to find a poison that is best suited to a Netflix -Series pass.

▶ ︎ Duma deputy Andrei Lugowoj, who was the main suspect in the Litvinenko poisoning case (2006), told the Tass news agency: If the neurotoxin Novitschok was detected, Navalny probably only came into contact with it at the Charité in Berlin.

Worse still: he blamed the Charité staff in Berlin for the attack. “A nurse, a doctor could administer the substance if they really wanted to bring Navalny into contact with a toxic substance in some way. I am sure that is exactly what happened. "

▶ ︎ The Russian Foreign Office spokeswoman Maria Sakharova, on the other hand, stated that the statements of the German government would follow a script hostile to Russia, which was apparently written before Navalny was poisoned. On a talk show on Russian state television, she said: "Immediately everyone ran to the microphones and seemed to have rehearsed in advance, as if this information campaign had been prepared in advance."

One only had to “press a button” and the allegations would look “like a copy” from times past. She was referring to the Skripal case, which was attacked in 2018 by Russian agents with exactly the same poison in Great Britain and severely poisoned."