The video message of the American Senator Ted Cruz sends the highest alarm. "Time is running out," warns a serious voice from the off as rows of Russian tanks roll through the picture.
In close-up, the villains come to the picture, as they seal with a handshake their sinister work against the United States: the Russian President Vladimir Putin - and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Cruz, Republican and failed presidential candidate, has done a lot in the past few months to achieve one goal: he wants to prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany in the future. Now he seems to be successful at the last minute.
From the video archive: Chancellor presses controversial pipeline
REUTERS
On Wednesday, the US Congress passed a law providing for sanctions against companies laying concrete-coated pipes in the Baltic Sea. In fact, this is currently only one thing: the Swiss Allseas. Their managers are threatened with visa withdrawal and asset freeze in the US.
Next week at the latest, the Senate will pass the sanction regulations, which were coupled to the $ 738 billion military budget. President Donald Trump has already announced that he will sign the bill.
For both sides, a race against time has started. Not even 150 kilometers separate the double-stranded line from its destination in Lubmin near Greifswald. About 1000 kilometers distance are already laid. If Allseas, which manages the world's largest laying ship with the "Pioneering Spirit", impresses and stops work, it will be tight.
It takes about five weeks, said a representative of the Russian Nord Stream shareholder Gazprom the "Wall Street Journal". But even if Allseas leaps off, they'll finish the project "in one way or another," he asserted. "If the sanctions come, they'll just make the construction longer and more expensive, but they will not kill him." If necessary, you will use your own ships. That the do-it-yourself method is a realistic option, however, energy experts doubt.
Stefan Sauer / DPA
Construction site of the receiving station in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
But even Cruz can not feel like a winner yet.
The law gives the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 60 days to draw up a list of companies. They would then have 30 days to complete their operations. Even if the ministries in Washington make pace, the Allseas ships could be literally a hit in the water on the way home and the sanctions.
Concern for Ukraine - and the US gas companies
For the time being, however, the war of nerves is in full swing. Because Cruz is not alone with his resistance to the pipeline. The Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee approved its draft with a broad bipartisan majority.
While Merkel argues that Nord Stream is needed to secure energy supplies, the Americans warn that Europe is dependent on Russia. The state-owned Gazprom will earn billions "that could be used to fuel Russian aggression," Cruz says in his video.
Many foreign policy experts fear that Ukraine will be weakened and destabilized because, thanks to the new pipeline, Moscow no longer needs its neighbor as a transit country for its supplies. And of course, it's also about business: the US would like to earn its own energy hunger and export liquefied gas to Germany.
Trump's position on the project is not clear
One, however, keeps shying away from the hard-line faction: The US president, who is known to have a weakness for his counterpart Putin and little sympathy for Ukraine. Trump rumbled that Germany is making itself a "hostage of Russia". However, that sounded a lot softer at the meeting with Merkel at the NATO summit last week. The whole thing is "a problem that Germany will have to solve for itself, perhaps it will not be a problem for Germany, I hope it is not," says Trump.
In fact, if the US government had wanted to, it would have been able to go against the pipeline long ago. It could simply have imposed sanctions under the 2017 CAATSA Law, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. But the administration renounced that.
Erin Scott / REUTERS
Ted Cruz: Rage in Texas over construction work in the Baltic Sea
Trump's party colleague Cruz has noticed that. If the pipeline were completed, "then it's the fault of members of this government who were sitting on their butts and have not exercised their power," the Senator recently ranted. Mentioned was: Minister of Finance Steven Mnuchin.
Was fear of Trump the limiting factor?
Others speculate that Mnuchin was not the only brakeman. Why did the White House and Congress wait until just before the end to decide on sanctions? That asked the energy expert of the news portal Politico, Ben Lefebvre. The answer of his lawyer: fear of Trump. The Republicans feared that Nord Stream sanctions would come in the context of Russia's 2016 election campaigning, an issue Trump does not want to know about. So they delayed a decision.
If one follows this interpretation, the sanctions now adopted would be a purely symbolic act, too late to take effect: a banger without explosive potential. But maybe it will be different: about three kilometers creates such a tube-laying ship a day. Actually, Nord Stream 2 should be ready by the end of the year. But the 9.5-billion-euro construction project has fallen into default. They wanted to complete the project "in the next few months," the construction company recently explained. However, an exact time could not be mentioned due to the weather.
Ted Cruz may have found a new transatlantic ally: the German winter.