US Lawmaker Urges Biden To Extend Russia Sanctions To Builders Of Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

Congressman Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged President Joe Biden on Thursday to expand a series of sanctions on Russia to companies involved in the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th April, 2021) Congressman Michael McCaul, the lead Republican on the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged President Joe Biden on Thursday to expand a series of sanctions on Russia to companies involved in the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

"If the Biden Administration is serious about imposing real costs on the Putin regime's efforts to undermine US democratic institutions and weaken our allies and partners, then it must ensure the Russian malign influence Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is never completed. Therefore, I urge the Biden administration to make additional sanctions designations today on the numerous entities widely known to be actively involved in the pipeline project as is required by congressionally-mandated sanctions.," McCaul said in a press release.

McCaul's statement followed Biden's declaration of a national emergency with respect to Russia and the imposition of multiple sanctions against Moscow over purported efforts to influence the 2020 US elections and intrusions in cyberspace - charges repeatedly denied by Moscow.

The sanctions included the expulsion of ten Russian diplomats and restrictions on the nation's access to the global banking system. But Biden's announcement made no mention of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline linking Russia to Germany.

The pipeline is 95 percent complete with construction of the remaining stretch blocked during the Trump administration under bipartisan pressure in Congress, which overrode Trump's veto of the Protecting Europe's Energy Security Act of 2019.

The act directs the US president to impose visa- and asset-blocking sanctions on any foreign person that knowingly provides pipe-laying vessels for constructing a Russian-origin energy export pipeline that makes landfall in Germany or Turkey.

McCaul said legal approval provided by the Justice Department last month for two sanctions packages targeting Nord Stream 2 AG and its CEO, Matthias Warnig, had been reversed by the State Department.