WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday reiterated his threat to cancel Russia’s lucrative, nearly completed natural gas pipeline to Germany should it further invade Ukraine, this time with Germany’s new chancellor standing beside him at the White House.
“If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops cross the border into Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said during a joint East Room news conference with German leader Olaf Scholz. “We will bring an end to it.”
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has amassed more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border in recent months, raising the threat of another invasion. In 2014, he invaded and annexed Crimea from its neighbor, which gained independence during the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Biden said that Putin still has the option of ending the crisis through diplomatic means, but that he cannot predict what Putin will do. “I don’t know that he knows what he’s going to do,” Biden said, adding that Putin and Russia will suffer if he goes ahead and invades. “We will impose the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed.”
Scholz, who in December took over from longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel, agreed that a new invasion would be severely punished. “There will be a high price for Russia,” he said. “Even Russia has understood the message now.”
Scholz, though, did not specifically repeat Biden’s language about Nord Stream 2, despite attempts from reporters to have him clarify his position. He did say that Germany and the United States are in full agreement on the sanctions. “We will be united,” he said. “We are absolutely together.”
Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images
The Biden administration has already adopted the strategy of releasing intelligence assessments about Russian preparations in order to pressure Putin not to invade. Last week, it made public indications that Russia intended to fake an attack on its forces by Ukraine — including actors playing corpses — to justify an incursion.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki at Monday’s daily press briefing said Russia had a history of using such “lies” as a prelude to its aggressive behavior. “We have seen where they have used these tactics in the past,” she said.
The natural gas pipeline — not yet operational — had become a sticking point in the discussions. Germany had resisted including it in the package of sanctions threatened against Russia should it invade, but in recent days has signaled that it would support scuttling the project entirely in the event of an invasion. Such a move would significantly damage Russia’s already hurting economy.
“Russia needs to be able to sell that gas,” Biden said.
Scholz, when asked how Germany would replace Russia’s gas, said his country has been aggressively moving away from fossil fuels to fight climate change, and this would hasten the work to switch to wind, solar and hydrogen.
“We are focusing on renewable energies,” he said. “We will make sure that this is the profitable future.”
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