Last fall, a Russian journalist, imposingly throwing his legs over his legs, said live on the federal channel that, according to his reliable sources, it would not take a few weeks before Nord Stream 2 (SP-2) would be closed.
Not suspended, not even frozen - closed for the poisoning of Navalny by Novichok (which this seemingly clever journalist fervently believes to this day).
However, the project was not closed either after two weeks or after eight.
Moreover, 2021 began extremely well for him.
At first, all leading European countries supported Nord Stream 2 and said that it could be removed from possible sanctions against Russia.
Then the Russian ship Fortuna began to gradually complete the pipe laying.
Gazprom explained that they will complete the laying of the Danish section (the one where the local authorities did not allow construction for a long time and delayed the project) in April.
The pipeline itself is planned to be commissioned in 2021.
Europe (especially Germany) is rather rubbing its hands.
However, despite the general wave of support for the project, there are those in the EU who, with perseverance worthy of better application, call on their colleagues in the bloc to think better.
For them, Nord Stream 2 is an exclusively Russian geopolitical project, and the European forces helping to build it are collaborators of Western affairs.
“These are actions behind the back of the EU, an anti-EU project that will soon serve Russia's aggressive policy.
It increases the dependence (of Europe on the RF -
GM
), undermines the economy and security.
It's time to stop it, ”said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
After this position of the Polish prime minister, two questions arise: why lie and why go against the tide?
Moravetsky is actually lying not even in every sentence, but in every phrase.
SP-2 is not being built behind Europe's back - the Germans passed all the necessary permits for its construction through the European Council.
SP-2 is not an anti-European project - rather, as Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz correctly noted, it is a European, even a pan-European project.
It maintains secure supplies of Russian gas to the EU and neutralizes the ever-increasing risks of Ukrainian transit (where insane nationalists can blow up the pipe or it will rot itself).
Nord Stream 2 does not and cannot serve Russia's aggressive policy in the European space, since there is no such aggressive policy.
Russian tanks do not rush to Berlin or even Warsaw, Russian military-political blocs do not approach European borders, Russia does not impose bundles of sanctions against the EU, does not arrange color or black-and-white revolutions on the European periphery, and, finally, does not teach the European Union to love democracy ...
Nord Stream 2 does not increase Europe's dependence on Moscow - it is intensified by the drop in gas production in the EU and the inability to find other, alternative suppliers to Russia with the same ratio of price, quality and product safety.
In addition, the SP-2 just increases Russia's dependence on the European market - after all, the laid pipe makes it necessary to export gas through it.
Finally, the pipeline never undermines the economy and security of the European Union - quite the opposite.
Guarantees for the supply of cheap and high-quality gas without additional Ukrainian risks help maintain competitive industrial production in consumer countries, and also allow them to abandon the same coal-fired generation (environmentally harmful).
Second question: why say it at all?
Why go not even against the European trend, but against the seething stream of common sense?
Poland has no way to disrupt the construction of SP-2 - all decisions have been made, all the money has been allocated.
Poland has no opportunity to convince Europe on the Nord Stream 2 issue.
Even in spite of all the intensity of lies and propaganda in the Navalny case, European leaders said that sanctions against the Russian Federation are separate, and energy relations are separate.
Finally, relations between Brussels and Warsaw are now so strained that the Poles absolutely cannot afford to take an initially losing position on the principle of “Baba Yaga against”.
So why?
There are two reasons for this position.
Their name is hopelessness and hope.
The Poles, in principle, have practically no flexibility in the Russian direction.
It is Germany that can first focus on protecting the rights of people in Russia and those who may be in Ukraine, and then talk about "important economic cooperation."
It is France who can first drown against Nord Stream 2, and then talk about the need for negotiations with Russia on the most important issues.
Poland, on the other hand, initially plays the role of the main Russophobe in the EU, and the Polish elites do not hide their hostile attitude towards the Russian Federation, on which their entire ideology is based.
If now the ruling Law and Justice (which also accuses Russia of the plane crash over Smolensk, where in April 2010, because of the great desire of Polish President Lech Kaczynski to sit down in bad weather, he himself died and the country's political elite flying by plane) will go to backtracking on the issue of SP-2, then neither its electorate, nor the Baltic neighbors, nor the Ukrainian authorities will understand it.
And then the policy of Poland to build the anti-Russian bloc headed by it on the eastern borders of the EU (on which Warsaw spent a lot of money and human resources) will have to put a fatal cross.
In addition, there is a glimmer of hope in Poland that its marginal position in the SP-2 will turn into the mainstream one with a wave of the hand of Joseph Biden.
That the American administration will complete the revision of Russian policy and decide to make every effort to ensure that the pipes of Nord Stream 2 rotten uselessly at the bottom of the Baltic.
Hope, of course, is weak (after all, Washington really wants to fix relations with the EU, which means that it is unlikely to torpedo the most important energy project for Europe), however, as long as it persists, the Poles will cling to it with all their limbs.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.