Putin's big geopolitical game: what Nord Stream 2 affects and whether it will help Europe

Putin's big geopolitical game: what Nord Stream 2 affects and whether it will help Europe.
 Putin's regime takes advantage of the situation: Why Nord Stream 2 is being talked about and whether it will help the EU in winter.
 While the free gas market in Europe was storming, Russia continued to stubbornly deny any involvement of Gazprom in the jump and the drop in blue fuel prices.
 "Gazprom is fulfilling all its contractual obligations," Moscow responded each time, but this week something went wrong.
 Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that the speedy certification and launch of Nord Stream 2 would bring down gas prices in Europe.
 As early as Oct. 8, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the actions of the European Commission and the U.S. over the Russian gas pipeline were one of the causes of the gas crisis in Europe.
 "The U.S. wants to directly quarrel Russia with Europe on the gas issue," Lavrov said.
 And on the same day, Kremlin spokesman Peskov assures that Russia has never used energy resources as a weapon and has not stopped supplies even in the most difficult times.
 How is that possible? For a long time we were assured that Russia had nothing to do with the gas crisis and that Nord Stream 2 had no effect on exchange prices at all, but now everything has changed.
 Segodnya, together with experts, investigated whether Nord Stream-2 is capable of bringing down natural gas prices in Europe and what role Russia's policy plays in this.
 Extra Quantity of Gas
 Leonid Kosyanchuk, former president of the Association of Operators of the Petroleum Market of Ukraine, believes that the long-term procedure for certification of the pipeline, in accordance with the third EU energy package, is precisely the component of the gas collapse that has arisen in the EU gas exchange.
 "Whether this will accelerate the certification deadline, the near future will show," says the expert and notes that those huge prices are only futures quotes, which have their physical embodiment of no more than 2-5 percent.
 Some experts, including Gennady Ryabtsev, deputy director of the Psyche Science and Technology Center, believe that the launch of Nord Stream 2 may indeed lower prices on the exchange, as it will create additional natural gas balances.
 "Of course, the launch of Nord Stream-2 will reduce these quotations, as they are solely speculative in nature," the analyst stressed.
 But economist Alexei Kushch in a commentary for "Segodnya" convinced that the "Nord Stream - 2" can not directly affect the price of gas in the free market.
 According to the expert, the gas through this pipeline is planned to be transported under long-term contracts and it will not be delivered to the spot market.
 Is Russia lucky?
 Financial analyst Alexey Luponosov says, yes - Nord Stream 2 is designed for supplies under long-term contracts.
 Therefore, it cannot instantly influence the conjuncture, especially on commodity exchanges, but Russia has tried to make its own geopolitical combination out of the usual market situation.
 "The situation is that the Putin regime has decided to use the purely conjunctural situation of the market bubble for its own purposes. Of course, we cannot say that Nord Stream 2 will not produce certain volumes of gas, but we should not overestimate it."
 According to Alexei Luponosov, in today's situation it would be cheaper to import higher quality liquefied blue fuel from the United States.
 The analyst also notes that Nord Stream-2 will definitely not be able to help Europe much this winter, as it will only reach smooth operation at the end of the heating season.
 "Even if we assume that the impossible has happened and "Nord Stream - 2" received permission to work right now, the first consumption from this pipeline will be possible not earlier than in February or at the end of January," says the expert.
 After all, not only do you need to pass certification, but also enough to fill the pipe with gas, and fill the storages on both sides.
 "So this is blackmailing people who live in Europe. The Russian Federation is spreading information through its sources that there will be "Nord Stream - 2", "Nord Stream - 1" and gas will be cheap everywhere."
 Luponosov notes that as part of this same geopolitical game, Russia has concluded agreements with Hungary and Belarus.
 "In this case, this concentrated expression of capital has already entered the political sphere, where Putin is trying to get the friendship of European countries for relatively cheap gas, but given the price-quality ratio, it is neither cheap nor of high quality."
 In general, neither Gazprom nor Nord Stream 2 are directly related to exchange gas prices, but Russia is trying to fully heat up the situation and use it to its advantage.
 "Russia has some relation to this, but it is not the one who inspired this situation, it was inspired by stock market speculators. Then Russia also joined in. It started playing up the stakes, creating a media background and remembering "North Streams" and other things.