OREANDA-NEWS. The official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the German government succumbed to the temptation to use the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as leverage on the Russian Federation. This was reported on the website of the department.

Zakharova stressed that the Russian Federation considers “unacceptable and unworthy from the point of view of international commercial law the decision of the German authorities to terminate the process of certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.”

“As it is now becoming clear, the German authorities were inconsistent and, under pressure, succumbed to the temptation to use the project as a lever of pressure on Russia, thereby demonstrating their inability to separate politics and economics,” Zakharova said.

She added that the implementation of the project was held back for various reasons, and the outright ban on certification, which was introduced on February 22, was “the logical culmination of the said doctrine of the priority of politics over economics in the context of its implementation.