Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the possible appointment of a US special envoy for Nord Stream-2, noted that the US is using new sanctions instruments: the US representative will apparently travel and threaten everyone, the US has such a form of diplomacy.
“I’ve heard that, apparently, because they no longer participate in the Open Skies Treaty, their hands have been untied, employees have been freed, they are appointing a special representative to terminate the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project”, – he said at a press conference following the talks with his Kazakh counterpart.
“Well, this is diplomacy – not gunboats, but now even new sanctions instruments”, – he said.
Earlier, Politico, citing US officials, reported that the White House is discussing the appointment of a US special envoy who would lead negotiations to end the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.
The role of the special envoy was offered to a close adviser to the US President Joe Biden, ex-State Department special envoy for international energy issues Amos Hochstein, he has not yet accepted the offer.
Nord Stream-2 envisages the construction of two lines of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is actively opposed by the United States, which is promoting its liquefied natural gas to the EU, as well as Ukraine and a number of European countries. Washington imposed sanctions on the gas pipeline in December 2019, as a result of which the Swiss Allseas was forced to stop laying.
It continued a year later – in December 2020, the Fortuna pipelayer laid 2.6 kilometers of pipes in German waters. As a result, according to Nord Stream-2 AG, at the end of January, approximately 148 kilometers of the pipeline remained unfinished out of the total length of its two lines of 2,460 kilometers: 120 kilometers remained to be laid in Danish waters and about 28 kilometers in German waters. As a representative of the US State Department said earlier, Washington does not exclude further measures against Nord Stream-2.