Warsaw imposed sanctions against two ships flying the Polish flag participating in the construction of Nord Stream 2

Poland imposed sanctions against two vessels involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2 and banned them from entering Polish territorial waters. This . was announced by the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Grzegorz Witkowski, according to Polish Radio

“We are not interested in what they carry, what they do, as long as it does not threaten the economic interests of our country. And these two vessels have recently stepped up their work on the Nord Stream 2 project. As of Friday, these two vessels must not appear in our waters. Otherwise, we reserve the right to detain them for verification,” he said.

We are talking about the ships Krebs Geo and Krebs Jet, owned by a German shipowner, but registered with the Gdansk Maritime Chamber. According to Witkowski, the agency analyzed all the documents that were provided to them by services related to the country's security: “We have decided to start the procedure for removing ships from the Polish flag. So that Poland has nothing to do with these two courts,” he said. Witkowski added that ships sailing under the Polish flag cannot infringe on the economic interests of Warsaw.

The Minister stated that the documents of Krebs Geo and Krebs Jet are now invalid and they will be considered as "units violating the sanctions imposed against Nord Stream 2".

In March of this year, the German company Uniper stopped financing Nord Stream 2, and the German Wintershall Dea also made an official statement about the suspension of project financing. Earlier it was reported that at least 18 companies refused to cooperate with operators and builders of the Russian gas pipeline.

In the United States, the pipeline is considered a threat to Europe's energy security - they imposed sanctions against it in December 2019, as a result of which the Swiss company Allseas withdrew from the project, and work on the construction of the pipeline continued only a year later. Later, the Danish consulting engineering company Rambøll, the Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas (DNV) GL, the German company Bilfinger SE and the Swiss Zurich Insurance also left the project.

Nord Stream-2 involves the construction of a gas pipeline with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year from the Russian coast through the Baltic Sea to Germany - bypassing the Baltic countries and Poland. It is being implemented by Nord Stream 2 AG with Gazprom as its sole shareholder.