Merkel is pushing the gas/oil pipeline from Russia.....in response to our LNG plants and oil exports. Germany is a friend like Iran.
She’s been doing that for perhaps a decade now. Even more intensely since the nonsense she instituted about shutting down nuke plants on German soil because “Fukushima” (there is no place that can be hit by a tidal wave where the German nuke plants are FWICS). But the original Nord Stream pipeline idea dates back to 2001, and was designed to go around the former Eastern Bloc states. The modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop stuff has been happening right under our noses.