UA
FR
DEFor four years, Ukrainian lobbyists have been persuading the U.S. presidential administration to impose sanctions against Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, The Wall Street Journal reports.
According to journalists, the intentions of members of the U.S.Congress are supported by two Ukrainian officials who have been working in Washington, D.C. for a long time and lobbying for any measures taken by the Congress and the White House to thwart this Russian project. The lobbyists – Vadym Glamazdin, a representative of Ukraine’s Naftogaz national oil-and-gas company, and Oleksandr Kharchenko, an official at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council – have been looking for vulnerabilities in the gas pipeline project.
On the U.S. side, they are backed by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
The Wall Street Journal states that Washington is preparing new sanctions against Nord Stream 2 that will make it impossible to refit the Russian pipe-laying vessel Akademik Cherskiy to handle pipes of greater diameter.
The new sanctions, part of a defense-spending bill, would come into force by the end of the year and target companies that would make those modifications as well as businesses that would insure, test, inspect and certify the pipeline.
“Now, the Ukrainians feel they are on the brink of success,” reads the article.
The new sanctions will be “the final nail into the coffin of this project,” said Vadym Glamazdin.
According to him, there will be no practical way to end the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline after these sanctions are imposed.
The media reports on the possible resumption of the construction of Nord Stream 2 have appeared recently. The pipeline construction is reported to restart with a stretch in German waters.
Bohdan Marusyak
