“It would be rather stupid to withdraw this project from discussion now.
Because if you want to negotiate, then you have to offer something.
I'm sure the US thinks the same way," the politician said in an interview with Wirtschafts Woche.
However, he said that he had always considered the construction of the Russian pipeline "a real project."
That said, "US skepticism" about Russian pipelines is "nothing new," Gabriel added.
He recalled that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken even wrote a book about the Siberian Pipeline Crisis in 1987.
As US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said earlier, in the event of Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would be stopped.
First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy Igor Ananskikh, in an interview with RT, expressed the opinion that possible sanctions against Nord Stream 2, which are discussed in the German Foreign Ministry, will hit primarily the economy of Europe and Germany itself.