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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Cindy U and I'm joined by Katie Balls and James Ossithe.

So the last 24 hours, things have been moving very quickly on the Ukrainian border.

This morning we're hearing that Olaf Schultz, the German Chancellor, has cancelled Nord Stream 2.

James, what's happened?

So yesterday Vladimir Putin recognised the two self-declared

breakaway republics in the Donbass. He then immediately signed friendship and cooperation

treaties with them and then announced that Russian heavy inverted comments quotes,

peacekeepers would move into these

republics. Now, one of the big questions is these republics only contain about a third of a

territory they claim. So will these Russian forces be used to claim that territory? Also, there is

the small matter of the fact that it is that, you know, that Putin's statement essentially ends

the Minsk process, which was meant to be

about trying to find some form of special status for these regions, but keeping them within Ukraine.

It is also a unilateral declaration of, you know, these places are taking away a chunk of

Ukrainian territory in violation of international law. So the question was

overnight was what level of sanctions will the West respond with? Now, I think there was a certain

pessimism because the Biden administration seemed to suggest that, look, we knew that there were

Russian forces in these places. You know, they were little green men before. They're now going to be

wearing Russian uniforms. You know, that won't trigger the full set of sanctions.

So it was surprising this morning when the German Chancellor Ralph Schultz came out and said that Germany will now not certify Nord Stream 2.

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