Russian President Vladimir Putin is pleased that the United States has decided to waive sanctions on a major pipeline from Russia to Germany, but Kremlin officials are noncommittal about a prospective one-on-one meeting with President Joe Biden.
“This is definitely a positive signal,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday.
State Department officials notified Congress of the waiver as Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Iceland, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, although Blinken’s team downplayed the coincidence. The decision provoked a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill, as federal law mandates the imposition of the penalties in a bid to halt the completion of a pipeline that Russia hawks and many NATO allies view as a strategic threat.
“I urge the administration to rip off the Band-Aid, lift these waivers, and move forward with the congressionally mandated sanctions,” said Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. “The administration has said that the pipeline is a bad idea and that it is a Russian malign influence project. I share that sentiment but fail to see how today’s decision will advance U.S. efforts to counter Russian aggression in Europe.”
Blinken implied that the waiver reflected a desire to avoid angering German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, which desires the completion of the pipeline. Other NATO allies fear that Germany, having secured energy supplies directly from Russia, will be indifferent to the plight of Ukraine or other NATO allies such as Poland if Putin decides to deprive them of natural gas in a crisis.
“Today’s actions demonstrate the Administration’s commitment to energy security in Europe, consistent with the President’s pledge to rebuild relationships with our allies and partners in Europe,” Blinken said Wednesday evening. “We will continue to oppose the completion of this project, which would weaken European energy security and that of Ukraine and eastern-flank NATO and EU countries.”
The waiver also functioned as an olive branch in the lead-up to Blinken’s meeting with Lavrov Wednesday, although senior State Department officials cautioned against “overthinking” the timing of the announcement.
Putin’s government has labored under an array of U.S. sanctions in recent years, stemming from numerous controversies — from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to interference in U.S. elections to the use of chemical weapons in assassination attempts.
Blinken took the meeting in order to test the proposition of whether we can achieve a relationship with Moscow that is more stable and predictable,” his spokesman said, but Lavrov emphasized prior to the encounter that “if this includes constant and predictable sanctions, that’s not what we need.”
The Russian envoy struck an optimistic note Wednesday after the meeting. “The vicious circle of tit-for-tat blows was initiated by former U.S. President Barack Obama,” he said. “We thought that the Trump administration would revise these decisions. But this failed to happen. On the contrary, in 2017, the United States adopted new anti-Russia, anti-diplomatic decisions. Then, we were forced to respond. This chain reaction can please no one. Today, I felt that our U.S. colleagues shared this view.”
Blinken’s team, after the meeting, put the onus back on the Russian side: “It is the Russian Federation that at every turn has injected that instability and that unpredictability into the relationship. Again, this was an opportunity to lay out a set of issues. I wouldn’t say that there were any breakthroughs.”
Peskov, the Kremlin official, maintained that Putin has decided whether he will meet Biden this summer or not. “Work on the assessment is still in progress, so the outcome of Lavrov’s meeting with Blinken is being analyzed, then the president will make a decision,” he said.
In the meantime, as Menendez emphasized, there remains the problem of how to manage Russian aggression against American partners and allies.
“First, what does the administration now expect from Germany after having made this significant concession to exercise the waiver?” the committee chairman said. “This decision has created uncertainty in many corners of Europe, and I expect to hear very soon from the administration on its plans moving forward. I believe President Biden should do everything possible to accomplish what the Trump administration failed to do for four years: stop the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for good.”
