Eastern Europe is experiencing increased tension due Russia’s troop build-up on Ukraine’s borders. At the same time, Russia, the key energy supplier to Europe, is finishing a major pipeline, Nord Stream 2, set to carry natural gas via the Baltic Sea directly to western Europe. Over time, the project has become a divisive issue among the European states and exposed possible differences between the US and Germany, the pipeline’s most prominent advocate in Europe. The opponents see the pipeline as a Russian foreign policy tool, allowing it to exert pressure not only on Ukraine, but also on the rest of Europe. Once the key transit country for Russian gas to European consumers, Ukraine feels particularly endangered as the pipeline would redirect the bulk of the gas transit elsewhere, leaving the country exposed to Russian pressure.
Speaker:
Martin Jirušek, Ph.D. works as Assistant Professor at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. In his work, Martin focuses on energy security in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), geopolitics, and the transatlantic dimension of energy security. He is also Managing Editor of the Czech Journal of Political Science and a consultant. Martin has conducted several research projects in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the United States, and is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the George Washington University in Washington, DC for the 2021-22 academic year.
Moderator:
Robert Orttung is a Research Professor at IERES and the Director of Research for Sustainable GW. He is editor of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Demokratization and co-editor of the Russian Analytical Digest. His research focuses on issues of urban sustainability in the Arctic.