Nord Stream 2 Construction to Be Completed Within Weeks, Russian Foreign Ministry Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Only a few weeks remain before the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to carry Russian gas to Europe, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of Economic Cooperation, Dmitry Birichevsky, said in an interview with Sputnik.

"The project is within reach of completion. There are only a few weeks left before the physical completion of its construction", Birichevsky said.

Last week, President Vladimir Putin confirmed that the pipeline, which will carry Russian natural gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea, is just 15 kilometres (9 miles) away from being completed.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow's trust in many of its European partners in the energy sector has been undermined, and the extension of the Third Energy Package to Nord Stream 2 has further eroded confidence in their reliability.

The Nord Stream 2 project, which is 99% complete, provides for the construction of a 745-mile offshore twin pipeline aimed to supply up to 1.9 trillion cubic feet of gas per year from Russia directly to Germany. Ukraine and several eastern European states have called on the EU to abandon the project, citing the bloc's perceived energy overdependence on Moscow.

The US has objected to the construction of the pipeline and sanctioned several entities linked to Nord Stream 2. Russia, in turn, has insisted that Nord Stream 2 is an entirely commercial project, urging critics to stop politicising it.