Angela Merkel knew that Russia could attempt to blackmail Europe into launching a major gas pipeline but “concealed” the information, according to Handelsblatt, the German newspaper.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was designed to double the flow of Russian gas directly to Germany but it was hugely controversial because of the risk it posed to Ukraine.
Critics feared that if it supplied gas directly to Europe, Russia would be able to starve Ukraine’s economy of the transit fees it had been collecting.
