Senator blocked the candidacy of the director of the CIA because of the "Nord Stream-2"

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on his Twitter page that he will prevent the confirmation of the new HEAD of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns until the Joe Biden administration imposes new sanctions on Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. .

“I will lift my lockdown when the Biden administration has met its legal obligations to report and sanction ships and companies building the Putin pipeline,” Cruz wrote.

Earlier, on March 3, a group of 40 US senators called on Biden to introduce new restrictions against companies involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2. “The construction of the project continues, and there is publicly available information about the courts and companies involved in the activities subject to sanctions,” the senators said. In their opinion, "the administration's failure to impose new sanctions" indicates that the United States is ready to allow the Russian authorities "to take control of gas supplies to Europe and increase its geopolitical influence."

US State Department spokesman Ned Pry said on March 5 that
Washington does not rule out further measures against the pipeline. He noted that in February, the agency submitted a report to Congress with a list of participants in the construction of the pipeline, after which the administration added the Russian pipe-laying vessel Fortuna and its owner, KVT-Rus, to another sanctions list. The barge and its owner were sanctioned under the European Energy Security Protection Act (PEESA). Prior to this, Fortuna was sanctioned under the CAATSA (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions) Act. “If we come to the conclusion that other entities are engaged in activities subject to sanctions under the PEESA law <...>, we will report this,” Prai said.

Nord Stream 2 involves the construction of two gas pipeline strings with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year from the coast of RUSSIA through the Baltic Sea to Germany, now the pipeline is more than 90% completed. The United States, as well as Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, are actively opposed to the project.