Germany puts Nord Stream 2 on ice after Russian actions in Ukraine

The German government has put the massive Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project on ice in the wake of Russia's decision to send troops to eastern Ukraine.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that a key document required for the certification of the undersea pipeline would be withdrawn, making final approval impossible.

Putin had committed, he said, "a serious breach of international law" by recognizing two separatist territories in Ukraine, as well as tearing up the UN Charter and the Minsk peace agreement for the region.

Scholz said in Berlin that he had asked the Economy Ministry to withdraw its existing analysis of supply security in relation to the pipeline.

"This sounds technical, but it is a necessary administrative legal step, without which no certification of the pipeline can take place," he said. The pipeline would therefore not be able to go into operation, he said.

There will be a new assessment of the security of gas supplies from Nord Stream 2, taking into account "what has changed in the past few days," Scholz said.

Before the latest dramatic developments in the Ukraine crisis, Scholz had refused to say explicitly whether he would scrap the pipeline in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In contrast, US President Joe Biden vowed during Scholz's recent visit to Washington that he would "bring an end to" Nord Stream 2 if Russia were to invade Ukraine.

The German government under conservative former chancellor Angela Merkel had long insisted that the pipeline was an international business venture, and not a political project.

The calls for Germany to put a halt to Nord Stream 2 had grown immediately louder in the past 24 hours.

A minister in Germany's three-way coalition government, Food and Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Tuesday that the project should not be continued.

"It is a project that targets Ukraine, that increases our dependence on Russian gas," he said.

Nord Stream 2 would link Western Europe with Russian gas reserves via a connection on Germany's Baltic coast, effectively bypassing an existing gas transit route via Ukraine.

The construction phase of the project is completed, but regulatory certification was still pending in Germany, meaning no gas was flowing.

With Scholz's announcement on Tuesday, that certification process has now effectively been halted.

Calls for the pipeline to be scrapped also come from the German opposition on Tuesday, as well as from abroad.

The foreign affairs spokesperson for the opposition conservatives, Jürgen Hardt, said on Tuesday "Nord Stream 2 has no future in the current situation."

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday “we have got to make sure that we cut the umbilicus, we snip the drip feed into our bloodstream from Nord Stream,” according to the PA news agency.