MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2020) Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, deputy chairman of Germany's Free Democratic Party parliamentary group, has on Friday urged Chancellor Angela Merkel to abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project over the death of a Georgian national in Berlin in 2019 after a Russian national was charged over the incident.
On Thursday, German prosecutors announced that charges had been filed against a Russian national called Vadim K. over the death of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, who fought on the side of Chechen militants from 2000-2004, in Berlin on August 23.
"I believe that this murder here in Berlin, really in the very heart of our capital, a few hundred meters from government buildings, is such a serious attack on German sovereignty that we must consider whether we can really lay this pipeline that will deliver money to Moscow for the delivery of gas from Russia. You can get gas from other suppliers," Lambsdorff told the Bild newspaper.
The Bundestag member said that he hoped Merkel would reconsider Germany's role in the project.
"This is why we ... are urging the chancellor to discuss today, with other European countries at the EU summit, how a joint response could be provided. Of course, it is difficult for the chancellor to convince other Europeans to react harshly at the same time as Nord Stream 2 is being completed,"�the lawmaker told the newspaper.
Russia's Ambassador in Berlin Sergey Nechayev was summoned to the German Foreign Ministry on Thursday after prosecutors sent the case to court, Heiko Maas, Germany's foreign minister, said.
In a later statement, Nechayev said that Germany's claims of Russian state agencies' complicity in the murder are groundless and that Moscow would be ready to respond if Berlin enacts certain measures. The German authorities already took the decision to expel two Russian diplomats last year over the incident.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December that Moscow repeatedly asked the authorities in Berlin to extradite Khangoshvili, who was wanted in Russia over his involvement with terrorist organizations. Putin has also expressed Russia's desire to assist in the ongoing investigation into the incident.
