US President Donald Trump on Friday night approved a decision to impose sanctions on the gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which is currently being built between Russia and Germany.

The United States has for a long time accused the project of making Germany dependent on Russian gas and to remove an important source of income for Ukraine, reports Ekot. The sanctions are aimed at companies that build the gas pipeline and also against investors in the project.

- There are two main reasons. One is that the US does not want Western Europe to become strategically dependent on Russia. The second is that the US itself wants to export its natural gas, which they now have surplus of, says Jan Hallenberg, research leader at the Foreign Policy Institute.

The company quits its job immediately

The Swiss company Allseas, which is one of the companies that works with the gas pipeline, immediately quit its job after the decision was signed. In a letter to the company, U.S. Senate representatives write that if the company continues its work, albeit for a day after the president signed the resolution, the company risks being penalized.

- I do not think it will be stopped, because Gazprom, the large Russian company, will take over the company that has previously closed the pipeline itself and put the ten percent remaining within a couple of months, says Jan Hallenberg.

Germany and the EU strike back

A press spokesman for the German government, Ulrike Demmer, went out on Saturday, saying that the United States is interfering in things that have nothing to do with them.

"This is hitting German and European companies and it is an interference with internal affairs," Ulrike Demmer, press spokesperson for the German government, said in a press release.

The European Commission is also critical of the US sanctions and said on Saturday that "the EU basically rejects all sanctions against EU companies conducting legitimate business", reports German Die Welt.