KALININGRAD, August 17. /TASS/: Western countries will certainly make attempts to undermine the Nord Stream 2 project, but they are all doomed to failure, since it has already been implemented, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. He said this during a meeting with professors and students of the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad.
"I am convinced that all attempts to undermine it, challenge it, all attempts to surround its completion with some conditions, they are doomed to failure. Although there will be such attempts," he said.
Lavrov stressed that the companies that are implementing the project "have built it almost to the last mile."
As the Russian Foreign Minister noted, the European Commission, despite the official opinion of its lawyers, retroactively extended the Third Energy package of the European Union to Nord Stream 2.
"I repeat once again, it is not only the decisions of two countries, Russia and Germany, supported by many members of the European Union that we have on our side, it is also legal correctness [which is also on our side], which we will defend," the minister concluded.
Nord Stream 2 project
The Nord Stream 2 project envisages the completion of two gas pipelines with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year from the coast of Russia across the Baltic Sea to Germany. Work on the project was suspended in December 2019 after Swiss Allseas abandoned pipe-laying operations due to the then-looming US sanctions. In December 2020, the construction of the gas pipeline was resumed after a year's pause.
In late July, it was reported that Nord Stream 2 was 99% complete, and the pipe-laying barge Fortuna continued to work at the final section. The first string of the pipeline was completed in June this year.
