Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky:
“The United States will not exert unlawful pressure on the construction and launch of Nord Stream 2. This is central to today’s US-German deal. This is the compromise for which, in my opinion, Berlin made a number of concessions in the political language of the agreement, but won big.
At the same time, the points voiced by US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, in particular, on the joint intention of Berlin and Washington to seek a 10-year extension of Russian gas transit through Ukraine, and if, they say, Russia suddenly “uses its energy sector against Ukraine,” then new sanctions have a clear politicized tilt. It is curious that Moscow did not refuse and does not refuse from Ukrainian gas transit in connection with the upcoming launch of the pipeline, and this was discussed at the highest level. But how and to what extent to extend it is a matter of Russian-Ukrainian agreements with the general agreement of the parties and conditions acceptable to them. At the same time, our partners need to clearly understand that we are not someone’s vassals, we have neither a suzerain nor a big brother. We are a sovereign state that does not accept diktat from the outside, especially in economic matters. We will proceed from this ”.
