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Updated April 8th, 2022 at 07:05 IST

Poland President Andrzej Duda says Nord Stream Pipelines should be completely 'dismantled'

"We still believe that Nord Stream 2 should not only be blocked, but dismantled since it is harmful to the entire European Union," Duda said in televised remark

Reported by: Zaini Majeed
Poland
IMAGE: AP | Image:self
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Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday said that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia should not only be blocked but completely “dismantled", adding that the energy reliance of entire Europe on Moscow “is harmful.” In an interview with the American broadcaster CNN, Duda said, "We still believe that Nord Stream 2 should not only be blocked, but simply dismantled since it is harmful to the entire European Union. This leads to Russian hegemony over Europe.” He continued, that the gas supply from Russia is the monopolisation of the European market. “Now, it is seen in black and white, it is simply deadly for Europe," he iterated. 

Gas project worth $11 billion was completed last September 

Germany, in a coordinated move with the European Union, has blocked the 1,200km pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea near the Russian coast of St Petersburg. The project worth $11 billion [£8.4bn] was completed last September in 2021, and the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom bears half of the spending of the project. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, together with Nord Stream 1 that started in 2011, delivered an estimated 110bn cubic meters of gas from Russia to Europe. 

The Nord Stream 2 was not yet operational due to license issues. As Berlin blocked the project in a retaliatory move to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that it was perhaps a “big mistake” to approve the project with Moscow. 

"My holding on to Nord Stream 2 was clearly a mistake," Steinmeier told German broadcasters.  "We held on to bridges that Russia no longer believed in and that our partners warned us about,” he added. 

Nord Stream 2 project, said the German President, sent a wrong signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin after his troops annexed Crimea in 2014. Even as former German chancellor Angela Merkel approved the 1,234-kilometer offshore pipeline that would supply majorly to Berlin’s gas demands, Social Democrats (SPD), current German chancellor Olaf Scholz Social Democrats (SPD) had remained bitter about the deal. As Russia launched a military offensive inside Ukraine on Feb. 24, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy had slammed Berlin’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline labelling it a threat to all of Europe, speaking alongside Poland's President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw.

"We hold the same position as Poland: Nord Stream 2 is unacceptable and it threatens Europe as a whole," Zelensky had told reporters. “We want the diversification of sources of energy delivery within the US, Poland, and Ukraine triangle," he added.

Polish leader Duda on Thursday reiterated that Warsaw was always against joint German-Russian investments in Nord Stream 2 and Nord Stream 2, adding that its development was “obviously political.” The gas pipeline, he said, is a way for Moscow to blackmail Central European countries. "We protested against this all the time, but, unfortunately, these investments were made. The German authorities in the European Union pushed these projects all the time," Duda said.  

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Published April 8th, 2022 at 07:05 IST

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