When President Trump called Germany a “captive of Russia” Wednesday at the NATO summit in Brussels, it sounded like a vindication for all of us in the region.

As the president of the former Soviet republic of Georgia from 2004-2013, and the governor of the Odessa region in Ukraine from 2015 to 2016, I speak for many in Ukraine and Georgia — two countries on the front lines of the Russian threat — in saying that we have long felt a deep unease with Russian-German energy deals like the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. Indeed, the implications of this pipeline pose an existential threat to the independence and security of American allies in Eastern Europe.