This morning, via N-TV (Germany's commercial news network), the final threat has been laid down, by the German Foreign Minister.
Heiko Maas, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview yesterday....there has to be information provided by Russia or the pipeline is halted. What kind of info? That isn't exactly specified.
All of this over the guy poisoned and sitting in a Berlin hospital (Putin critic Alexej Navalny)? Yes.
Maas goes on to suggest a hundred-odd companies from a dozen European countries are in the middle of this and will suffer financially. The cost will be the burden of the EU, and the consumers.
Maas is basically saying over the next week....Russia needs to lay a story on the table. How big a story? One might imagine that they need to announce where the poison was manufactured and who is in control of it. The act of who ordered this or who to blame? That probably could be dumped. The idea of having control over the poison? I might suggest this is what the EU wants in the end. Whether Putin is willing to cooperate on this is the big unknown.
If nothing happens? I might suggest in two weeks that the EU gathers up enough support and at least temporarily suspends the pipeline. On the positive side....the old pipeline (1970s) still runs, and Europe can still buy natural gas from Russia.
No comments:
Post a Comment