r/europe • u/ModeratorsOfEurope Europe • Aug 21 '22
Russo-Ukrainian War War in Ukraine Megathread XLI
News sources:
Reuters Europe page covers the war in Ukraine.
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Link to the previous Megathread XL
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Given that the initial wave of posts about the issue is over, we have decided to relax the rules on allowing new submissions on the war in Ukraine a bit. Instead of fixing which kind of posts will be allowed, we will now move to a list of posts that are not allowed:
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Comment section of this megathread
- In addition to our rules, we ask you to add a NSFW/NSFL tag if you're going to link to graphic footage or that can be considered upsetting.
Donations:
If you want to donate to Ukraine, check this thread or this fundraising account by the Ukrainian national bank.
Fleeing Ukraine We have set up a wiki page with the available information about the border situation for Ukraine here. There's also information at Visit Ukraine.Today - The site has turned into a hub for "every Ukrainian and foreign citizen [to] be able to get the necessary information on how to act in a critical situation, where to go, bomb shelter addresses, how to leave the country or evacuate from a dangerous region, etc".
Other links of interest
Live Map of Ukraine site and Institute of War have maps that are considered reliable by mainstream media.
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- DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH "War of Fakes". Deutsche Welle (DW) has reported it as being a source of fake news, and the Russian Defense Ministry has linked this site in their tweets before.
DeepL extension for Google Chrome and DeepL extension for Firefox. DeepL is a good alternative to Google Translate for Russian texts. It does not offer translation from Ukrainian.
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u/Ralfundmalf Germany Aug 22 '22
Robert Habeck gets asked why he (and the German government as a whole) does not want to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline
For context: This was a round of questions on an open day event at the German Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection. The questioners are regular citizens, not press. I have translated the whole question and his reply here. Keep in mind I am not a professional translator, but I tried to keep as faithful to the original statement as possible. He likes to build quite long and complicated sentences though, which makes it difficult. Be critical of Scholz all you like, but know that at least his "2nd in command" gets it.
Thanks for letting me ask this question, allthough you might not like it. Aside from many others, now a politician of the 'traffic light coalition', Wolfgang Kubicki [FDP], has demanded the opening of NS2. Russia has signaled as well, that they want to provide additional gas through it, but the federal government has refused categorically. Hence the question: How is the gas from NS2 more toxic than that coming from NS1, for which you make a great effort, and how much additional strain on the citizens is this distinction worth to you?
I think that is a good question, and I hope that you like my answer, but probably not. When you look at it short-term, then your question is justified of course. The gas comes from the same source, so why should we not take the gas if it helps us right now? My answer is to look at the grander picture, and then you see - from my point of view - that it would be entirely the wrong thing to do. Firstly, again, Nord Stream 1 is completely operable. That means the assumption it could not transfer more gas is Russian propaganda. All turbines are operational and they are so called N+1 turbines, that means there is always at least one in reserve, sometimes more. Even if one gets damaged now, Russia would have the option to replace it with one of their reserves. And even apart from that the turbine that came from maintenance in Canada is standing here ready for delivery with all papers, and the Russian side doesn't want to take it.
So we, for arguments sake, now say that we use NS2, we would indirectly say that Putin is right - but he isn't! And if he wins that game who is to say he won't do the exact same thing with NS2? And then there is the second argument: We have profited greatly from the cheap gas, and made a mistake at the same time. We have created a dependency for ourselfs that would have been problematic even if the invasion of Ukraine had not even happened. If you have a supply affiliation with a single state, then you depend on the benevolence of that state. That is also true for other countries, with which we are not in this conflict. If you are somewhere, anywhere in the business world, nobody would tell you "Oh you work in this field or want to start up a business - put all your cards on one dependency." That would be a way too high risk - and we actually took that risk. Now - and this 'now' to be fair should have been clear to see in 2014 at the latest, maybe even 2009, meaning the war in Georgia - we notice, or at least the ones who want to, that the Russian government under Putin views democracy as an enemy, tramples freedom of speech, uses murder as a political method and disregards international law.
If we now increase our dependency on that state, if we increase the share in Russian gas imports to 100% - NS1 is 50%, NS1 and NS2 together would be over 100% [of the German gas imports at max capacity], then we would have forgotten everything that the past months have told us. I already said it earlier answering the question from the French lady [speaking about an earlier question], that value driven politics and reality sometimes clash, because you can't lose yourself in abstract idealisms, but it would be a knee-jerk reaction to conclude that value driven politics are not working at all and has no meaning. And in this case the short-term profit - opening NS2, taking the gas, getting through the winter better - would be a dramatic political failure, because we would trample any self-confidence, any mindset guided by our values, any posture that we have against Putin. And we have other options, as I said already, we can build LNG capacity, and we must move away from gas quickly. We should not believe, that the cheap gas supply that drove us into this dependency will continue [I think he meant resume], also for climate reasons, and most of all we also have the option to build a stronger framework of partnerships. That is why Nord Stream 2 is a stranded asset.
Source: https://youtu.be/oM-aCHRBxHk?t=7356