(MENAFN- UkrinForm) If the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is constructed, Russia may attack the ships of the Baltic countries in the Baltic Sea, just as it attacked the Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait last year.
'Let's imagine that we have allowed the Nord Stream 2 to be constructed, which is absolutely impossible for us, but let's imagine that in 2021 Putin decides to protect the Nord Stream 2 from the Baltic countries and to attack Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian ships, guided by the same explanation we heard after the attack on the Ukrainian ships," President of Ukraine Poroshenko said at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia after he had been presented with the International Statesman Award, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
According to him, the main thing that the countries can do to prevent such scenarios from recurring is to unite within NATO, in the bilateral relations, stop any politically motivated and controversial Russian projects, and also get rid of dependence on Russian gas.
'We, Ukrainians, did it. Every year before my presidency, Ukraine was accused of stealing Russian gas, and in October or November, they [the Russians] stopped gas supplies. In 2015, Putin said the same thing to me, but I replied that we would buy gas in Europe. He noted that it would be more expensive. I replied that such was the price for the independence, including energy independence, Poroshenko said.
In his speech, he also stressed that the Russian attack on Ukraine, which claimed thousands of lives of Ukrainians, became also a unifying factor for the country and Europe and the world as a whole.
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