Letter to the Editor of The Observer
Dear Sirs,
Further to the article by Simon Tisdall "Biden must punish Putin's cyber-attacks" (21.03.2021) in relation to the ineffectiveness of current sanctions against Russia over the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline project, the geopolitical debate in Germany has been muddied by the insertion of a moral dimension. President Walther Steinmeier has declared that German support for the dual pipeline, which circumvents Poland and Ukraine and supplies gas directly under the Baltic Sea to Germany, is dictated by the need to atone for wartime German crimes against Russia. Of course, Germany should display a sense of guilt towards Russia for these crimes, but not as a justification for isolating Poland and Ukraine to whom Germany has a similar, if not an even greater, moral debt, because they lost far more lives per head of population in the Second World War than Russia proper and, unlike Russia, they are not a current threat to Germany's security and democracy. It is time that the UK took a similar stand to the U.S. government on sanctions over this pipeline.
Yours faithfully,
Wiktor Moszczynski
Spokesman Federation of Poles in Great Britain
tel 07786471833
working address Flat 88 isambard Court Brentford TE8 8FP
