Russia (Washington Insider Magazine) -Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Russia on Aug. 20 ahead of her scheduled visit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv two days later.
The chancellor’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin on Aug. 13 that it will be her first visit to the Kremlin since January 2020 amid strained relations between the two nations, Germany’s NDTV reported.
He also confirmed the official visit will include a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose increasingly authoritarian regime is under European Union (EU) sanctions which includes alleged assassinations attempts on EU soil.
Merkel’s visit comes after a White House meeting in mid-July with U.S. Joe Biden. They agreed to allow a Russian natural-gas pipeline project – Nord Stream 2 (NS2) – to become operational, leaving Ukraine potentially vulnerable to further Moscow aggression since it would circumvent the country’s existing pipeline network to Europe, rendering it obsolete.
While Seibert went on to say that he cannot disclose any information on the agenda for the upcoming visit to Moscow, it does come during a time when NS2 is more than 90-percent complete.
With Germany agreeing to send a special envoy to renegotiate the existing Ukrainian-Russian natural-gas transit agreement set to last through 2024, the Merkel-Putin discussion comes at a time when the EU and the U.S. look to establish a firm set of guidelines for Russia which has the most to gain from the underwater energy project.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also on Aug. 10 appointed reputed Russia hawk Amos Hochstein to the position of senior advisor on energy issues. His biggest hurdle going forward is to implement the NS2 deal in order to ensure national security guarantees to Ukraine, which has defended its territory from Russian-armed formations since 2014.
France and most of Eastern Europe oppose NS2 over what they say is mostly a political endeavor. Kyiv has argued that its existing pipeline system has successfully and can still supply blue fuel to Europe without NS2.
However, NS2’s certification to operate is not certain due to existing EU legislation related to an energy charter that requires energy producers to be separate from suppliers – Russian state-owned Gazprom is one and the same in this project.
The continent’s top court, the Court of Justice of the EuropeanUnion, ruled in July to limit Gazprom’s access to Germany’s OPAL pipeline through which gas from NS2’s underwater pipeline in the Baltic would flow.