A briefing between the State Department and Congress staff on Vladimir Putin’s Russia-Germany pipeline has been strained this week, and Biden officials are diverting questions about why they had not moved faster and with more aggressiveness with sanctions a stop its completion.
- Biden officials he also denied negotiations with the Germans over a possible side deal to allow the pipeline to end.
Why it’s important: As reported earlier this week, some allies are concerned that Biden will be unstable at Putin’s North Stream 2 pipeline, and the fight is significant evidence of whether the new president’s harsh rhetoric against Russia will be matched by the action.
- Russian opponents, including senior officials in the Ukrainian and Polish governments, are concerned that Biden will not want to counter Angela Merkel and not inflict heavy costs on the Germans.
- And members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, were disappointed by a report the Biden State Department recently sent to Congress, which only aimed to sanction a Russian ship. The Trump administration had already sanctioned that ship, the Fortuna.
Behind the scenes: The first call between senior State Department officials and Republican and Democratic National Security officials in the House and Senate came on Tuesday.
- Tuesday’s call was sorted and made from a safe room. A source in the call, and two more informed sources about the conversation, said the questioning focused on why the Biden administration had not targeted a larger number of ships for sanctions, as they arguing assistants, maritime monitoring clearly shows other ships are working on the pipeline.
- The call continued for about half an hour until the line suddenly dropped from the end of the State Department. Although some Republicans in the call initially thought they had been hanged, the State Department said it was a technical issue.
Then on Thursday at 2 p.m., State Department officials regrouped for a second briefing, this time unclassified, with senior staff from the House and Senate offices.
- This call was more controversial, according to three sources who participated. The growing hostility came from Republican officials who were dissatisfied with the responses. Biden officials seemed to be politely trying to avoid conflicts.
At one point in the call, a Republican Senate member asked Biden officials why they had not sanctioned Nord Stream 2 AG, the company in charge of building the pipeline.
- State Department officials responded that they would not discuss specific entities and that they were still investigating the facts and gathering evidence.
“We’re talking about the company that owns Nord Stream 2,” said the Republican official abruptly, according to the three sources in the call. “Right now I’m on their website and they identify as the company in charge of planning, building and operating the pipeline.”
- “You have determined that sanctionable activity related to the pipeline was taking place,” the official continued. “What kind of information do you need to get to confirm for yourself that the company that manages the transaction you just sanctioned is engaged in a sanctionable activity?”
State Department officials argued that the general tone of the call was hostile and stated that they had later heard members of Congress staff describe the briefing as useful.
- They argued that it may take a long time to determine which entities are punishable and reiterated that the Biden administration plans to use all available tools to stop the completion of the pipeline.
During the call, Molly Montgomery, the Deputy Under-Secretary for the Office of European and Eurasian Affairs denied that the US was negotiating a possible side deal with Germany to allow the pipeline to continue.
- Reuters reported on Friday, citing a German government spokeswoman, that “there is an exchange between the US government and Germany regarding the North Stream 2 pipeline to bring Russian gas to Europe.” The report did not provide any further details.
- State Department officials said the word “exchange” should not be construed as a negotiation and that the Biden administration, in the course of normal diplomatic talks, had registered its concerns about the pipeline with the Germans.
A senior Senate aide to the convocation he also defended the Biden administration against the charges of moving slowly and smoothly, saying there was bipartisan opposition to the pipeline, but the administration “must ensure that any sanctions meet a probative rule that can be planted. before the courts “.
- “Time is short and they’re under the gun,” the aide said, “but I think they’re trying to prevent the clown car from approaching by the last administration that did things like sanction the Russian company. Rusal, but he had to go back after they almost collapsed the world aluminum market. “
- “Measuring twice to reduce once is always a solid policy,” the assistant added, “especially when there is a sense of urgency to do it right.”
- Yes, but: The Trump administration only removed Rusal from its sanctions list after a blacklisted oligarch and a friend of Putin’s, Oleg Deripaska, continued their commitment to divest their majority stake in the company.
GOP Congress staff he asked Biden officials to commit to updating the report they had already delivered to Congress with new entities that should be sanctioned, but State Department officials did not commit to doing so.
- One of the Biden officials told Congress officials that if they had more information about the entities involved in the pipeline, they should say what it is. Earlier this month, bipartisan members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken naming these alleged ships.
- In the recently passed defense bill, Congress ordered the administration to sanction a wide range of activities involved in the pipeline.
The big picture: Pipeline construction stopped during the Trump administration after Congress enacted sanctions in a 2019 bill and top Trump officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, issued aggressive threats.
- But the Russians resumed major construction on North Stream 2 after Biden took office.
The summary: The pipeline is more than 90% complete and the summer could be over without major intervention to stop it.