The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the United States of ignorance of its own laws
Washington, in an attempt to protect its opportunistic economic interests, has actually switched to the rhetoric of the Cold War era.
Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova stated this at a briefing, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“With amazing tenacity, Washington continues to prove to the world what has become an axiom - the fact that, apart from sanctions, the United States has no other arguments left on the international agenda. The fact that the focus of attempts to exert pressure quite often turns out to be literally everything that is associated with Russia is no longer news. At the same time, the US's own allies in Europe also suffer.
This time, the head of the State Department himself announced adjustments to the explanations published by the department on the application of Article 232 of the 2017 law “On Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions.” Now, as explained by the State Department, this law will still apply to gas pipeline projects, in particular, Nord Stream 2 and the second branch of the Turkish Stream. Threats of using the entire range of repressive measures were also voiced if the so-called. “Violators” will still participate in them,” Zakharova said.
At the same time, she noted that recently interviews with US Secretary of State M. Pompeo, where he touches on similar topics, are increasingly reminiscent of feature films from the Cold War era.
“It is a well-known fact that in these cases we are talking about purely commercial projects. We, our European partners, have repeatedly told the Americans about this – with numbers, facts and calculations in hand.
In this case, a natural question arises: did the State Department read that very law, directly Article 232? We read. This happened more than once when, from this very rostrum, we told our American partners about the details of those very international agreements and their internal legislative acts to which they refer. Let's repeat the trick.
Article 232, which US Secretary of State M. Pompeo spoke about, states that the US President can impose sanctions only “in consultation with allies.” Curious, were such decisions agreed upon with anyone? Maybe with Berlin, although there, it seems to me, only the lazy did not indicate their negative attitude towards some hypothetical American sanctions against German companies? We will return to Berlin's reaction today.
Once again I would like to ask this question: have you fully read the very law that the State Department and its immediate superior referred to,” said the Foreign Ministry representative.
She expressed full confidence that the United States is only pursuing its own opportunistic economic interests here in an effort to gain a foothold in Europe as a supplier of hydrocarbons, and for the Americans, all means are good.
“There is nothing that Washington will not use to achieve this goal. At the same time, they could not help but understand that their expensive gas would be purchased, apparently, only “under pressure.” In an attempt to convince them that they were “right,” they apparently used literally everything that came to mind, including the hackneyed formulation about the need to protect their European friends from “aggressive Russia” in this way. This is our favorite quote. Once again we would like to emphasize that such harsh statements by the Secretary of State are unacceptable. Please re-read Article 232 again,” Zakharova urged.
She also voiced Berlin’s reaction, quoting a statement from the German Foreign Ministry:
“The United States disregards the rights and sovereignty of Europe by threatening sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project.” Germany considers it necessary to develop a common approach to sanctions policy towards Russia, Washington’s actions complicate this... With its announcement of measures that also threaten European enterprises with sanctions, the US government neglects the right and sovereignty of Europe to independently decide how and where we get energy from. European energy policy is shaped in Europe, not in Washington. We reject extraterritorial sanctions."
“In general, it is impossible not to agree with this phrase. There is only one “but”: perhaps the problem is that they began to pronounce it only now; perhaps it would be necessary to operate with similar theses a little earlier,” a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry commented on the statement of her German colleagues.
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