Lithuanian president promises to help Ukraine block the NordStream-2 pipeline
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, in the light of Brussels' preparations for negotiations with Moscow, has promised to help Ukraine block the initiatives to expand the NordStream gas pipeline, reports BNS.
Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states have declared that the NordStream 2 project will strengthen the EU's dependence on Gazprom gas. The pipeline will also reduce the importance of Ukraine as a transit country, which would strike a blow to the Ukrainian economy.
Grybauskaite discussed these issues with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday in Kharkiv.
"Ukraine is quite openly asking for our support in blocking various issues related to this project, and we have certainly done so until now," Grybauskaite told reporters on Friday.
“We are critical [of this project], and will clearly regard it more as a political project than an economic one,” she said.
The European Commission sent a request to the Council of the European Union on Friday to receive a mandate for negotiations with the Russian Federation on the key points of the NordStream 2 project's operations.