The Kremlin is taking advantage of the fact that the world is in an energy crisis. Canceled pipelines and drilling moratoriums have caused natural gas prices to spike over the past year. Prices have doubled in the United States and quintupled in Europe and Asia. The Biden administration has no plans to increase gas production and lower energy prices, so homeowners and industrialists alike are looking to Russia’s state-owned energy company for relief.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing two pipelines to solve energy problems in Europe and Asia. The first is Nord Stream 2, which can pump 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas from Ust-Luga, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, each year. The second pipeline is the Power of Siberia 2, which can pump 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas from the Purpeyskaya compressor station in Russia to the Xinjiang region of China each year. These two pipelines would double Russian gas exports to Germany and China.

Yet this extra energy comes at a tremendous geopolitical cost.

Nord Stream 2 would make Germany even more reliant on Putin for its energy needs and allow Russia to stop shipping gas through the war-torn nation of Ukraine. Currently, Russia pays Ukraine approximately $2 billion in transit fees to send gas through its territory. But once Nord Stream 2 is online, Russia will have the option of selling gas to Europe using Germany as its primary transit nation. In essence, Germany would be dependent on Russia, and the rest of Europe would be dependent on Germany.

This is why the fiercest critics of Nord Stream 2 have dubbed it “the Molotov-Ribbentrop pipeline.” In 1939, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a nonaggression treaty that enabled Russia and Germany to partition Poland. Today, Russian and German industrialists are building a pipeline that divides Europe into Russian and German spheres of influence.

And the Power of Siberia 2 makes the situation even worse.

Just as Nord Stream 2 gives Russia the option to pump gas through either Ukraine or Germany, Power of Siberia 2 would give Russia the option to sell gas to either Europe or China. Currently, the Power of Siberia 1 pipeline is not connected to the oilfields Russia uses to supply Europe. But Power of Siberia 2 would join Russia’s internal gas networks and connect China to the gas fields that supply Europe. That means Russia would be able to cut the gas to Ukraine and Germany if they refused to cooperate with Putin while Gazprom continued to sell to Communist China.

Although German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently said he would consider halting Nord Stream 2 if Russia attacked Ukraine, he might not be able to stop the project for long before German industrialists become desperate for gas.

Few people know it, but Putin follows a blueprint laid out in a 1997 book by neo-fascist political scientist Aleksandr Dugin: The Foundations of Geopolitics. This book is required reading for every Russian military officer above the rank of colonel because it lays out a strategy for unseating the U.S. as the world’s superpower. “The task of Moscow is to tear Europe away from the control of the U.S., to assist European unification, and to strengthen ties with Central Europe under the aegis of the fundamental external axis Moscow-Berlin,” writes Dugin. “Eurasia needs a united, friendly Europe.”

In return for Germany’s rejection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and joining a Russian alliance, Dugin proposes Russia help Germany gain dominance over Catholic Europe while Russia focuses on dominating Eastern Orthodox nations. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline helps Russia accomplish these goals by putting Eastern Orthodox nations like Belarus and Ukraine at Russia’s mercy while transforming Germany into Catholic Europe’s central energy hub. But the ultimate goal is to undermine the U.S. by pitting it against a much more powerful Eurasian power bloc led by Moscow and Berlin.

“Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 are key components of Putin’s plan to tighten his grip on nations in Eastern Europe that used to be part of the Soviet empire,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “Germany and Russia’s Secret War Against America.” “Since these pipelines travel directly from Russia to Germany, they enable Putin to shut off gas supplies to nations in Eastern Europe—Ukraine, Poland—and the Baltic nations while keeping supplies flowing to Germany. This places a sharp edge on Putin’s energy weapon! To the former Soviet nations that he is determined to bring back under Russia’s power, he can say: Either obey Russia or suffer cold winters with no gas to heat your homes.”

The Trumpet and our predecessor magazine, the Plain Truth, have proclaimed for 70 years that Germany would lead a final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire. The Bible reveals that Russia will play a key role in Germany’s rise to power.

An end-time prophecy in Ezekiel 27 describes a trading power called Tyre that exchanges merchandise with many nations. “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Now you, son of man, raise a lamentation over Tyre, and say to Tyre, who dwells at the entrances to the sea, merchant of the peoples to many coastlands, thus says the Lord God: “O Tyre, you have said, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’ … Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of every kind; silver, iron, tin, and lead they exchanged for your wares. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech traded with you; they exchanged human beings and vessels of bronze for your merchandise’” (verses 1-3, 12-13; English Standard Version).

Tyre refers to an end-time resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, while the people of Javan settled in Greece, and the peoples of Tubal and Meshech settled in Russia. This is a prophecy about German and Russian merchants exchanging human lives for merchandise. Today, German politicians and business leaders are surrendering Ukraine for better relations with Russia and more substantial leverage against the rest of Europe. As a result, many nations are likely to experience a winter of despair as Germany and Russia rise up as a power bloc capable of challenging the United States.