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Nord Stream 2 and the pressure of sanctions
Summary
A look back at the Baltic construction milestone reported on 28 December 2020 and the sanctions climate around it.
What did it mean when Nord Stream AG said it had finished building Nord Stream 2 in Germany's exclusive economic zone? On 28 December 2020, the Russian-led consortium announced that this stretch of the natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea was complete.
The announcement came against an explicit warning. The United States had previously threatened wider sanctions on the project if work continued. The consortium's statement therefore marked a step forward in construction, taken despite that threat.
A tense week for sanctions politics
The pipeline news arrived amid other signs of Washington's readiness to use sanctions. On 23 December 2020, the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on Belarusian officials and four offices over human rights abuses during protests against President Alexander Lukashenko.
The two cases are different in substance. One concerned an energy project, the other alleged abuses against protesters. Both showed the United States using, or threatening, financial and political penalties against Russia-linked interests and a Russia-neighbouring government in the same week.
Moscow's wider regional activity
On 22 December 2020, South Korea said it had scrambled fighter jets after four Chinese and fifteen Russian military aircraft entered its air defence identification zone. Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said China had notified it in advance of a joint exercise with Russia.
For readers in Kyiv and across the region, the question the 28 December announcement raised was how far a sanctions threat could restrain a project once work was under way. On that date, the consortium's answer was to report the German-zone construction as finished.
