Ukraine will be in a very tough position to resist Russian economic pressure once the Baltic energy route has more capacity.
The completion of this pipeline, and the launch of Turkstream, would strengthen the Kremlin’s stranglehold over Europe’s energy security and jeopardize the economic and physical security of Central and Eastern Europe – Ukraine most of all. Despite protests from the United States and a number of European countries, the political and economic momentum behind Nord Stream II may be too great to overcome.
But funny enough, Merkel's political problems have led her to reverse course and demand "protections" for Ukraine.
But those paper protections for Ukraine would be as valuable as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum's protection of Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Kiev giving up nukes it inherited from the USSR.
America continues to oppose the Baltic Sea line. Funny that environmentalists are so silent about that sea bed line when they went ballistic over the Canada-U.S. pipeline.
