Mikhail Krutikhin: "Gazprom's decision on Nord Stream 2 is an act of gas war"

“The situation is a little confusing, but sometimes you need to throw out some extra moments in order to understand what is happening.

Let's talk about the turbine, which ended up in Canada, and then it will probably be handed over to Gazprom again through Germany. It is completely unimportant in the alignment of those forces around the supply of Russian gas to Europe. Because at the compressor station, eight units operate alternately.

And when one of these installations fails, due to preventive maintenance, due to maintenance, due to repairs, then all the others are quite capable of taking over its work and pumping gas in the volumes that the pipe can withstand.

So, when Gazprom announced that it was reducing the flow through Nord Stream 1 due to the fact that it allegedly cannot receive a turbine from Canada, this is not true, because it was completely safe to continue working and farther.

This is the first. Second, Nord Stream 1 is now undergoing preventive maintenance. Gazprom announced that the preventive maintenance would take ten days. Indeed, there are such regular shutdowns of gas pipelines to bring it into a divine state and enable the continued operation of this complex facility.

But suddenly there was a suspicion that Russia would use this period to achieve some of its political or even military goals.

Politicians in Germany and other European countries started talking about it.

They predict that the ten day period may not be over in ten days, that Russia may drag out the shutdown even further.

There are reasons for such suspicions.

We see that even the reduction in Nord Stream 1 pumping was completely unjustified from the point of view of technology, and it is quite possible that those gas compressor units with turbines could pump further.

And, most importantly, during the previous moments of such exploitation, such preventive measures, Gazprom always redirected the necessary volumes of gas, which were out of this equation, along other routes, again to consumers in Europe. But this time something completely different happened.

The Russian government announced a ban on the use of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, that is, through Belarus and Poland to Germany, because Russia imposed counter-sanctions against the operator of the Polish section. So you can't download anything there.

In the Ukrainian direction, Gazprom refuses to increase pumping through the border checkpoint. Also, Gazprom did not want to book gas volumes in advance in order to cover the gas shortage caused by the Nord Stream preventive measures.

That is, all this was done intentionally, not for technical reasons, but by decision of the top Russian leadership.

This can be interpreted as an act of gas war. The goal may not be as great as some suggest. That is, some suggest, they say, let's cut off the gas to the Europeans, and they will agree to the start of the work of Nord Stream-2.

I think it's not. Nord Stream 2 cannot be put into operation now. This is not allowed by US sanctions.

So let's leave this reason aside.

In fact, Russia is making it clear to the Europeans that it is necessary to change Europe's policy regarding support for Ukraine”.

The full commentary by Mikhail Krutikhin can be viewed here.