Peskov called the situation around Nord Stream a crisis

MOSCOW, 1 Sep — PRIME. The situation around Nord Stream is a crisis, while problems with equipment maintenance have arisen due to anti-Russian sanctions, said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the President of Russia.

“This question should rather be addressed to Siemens and to the company that owns this equipment – this is Gazprom, you know that the manufacturer is Siemens, this is high-tech equipment, and you can hardly find many companies in the world that are able to service it,” – Peskov explained, answering a question from journalists about whether there is a threat of a complete cessation of gas supplies via the pipeline due to problems with maintenance of equipment by Siemens in connection with sanctions.

Peskov also noted that there are long-term contracts, “as far as we understand, for after-sales service.”

“There is a legal problem there – with the fact that this contract, it is with the British subsidiary of Siemens, which operates under British law, and there is also a whole package of sanctions, an impressive package of sanctions that the British authorities have introduced, and all this creates a tangle of problems for work of the Gazprom company, this is not the tangle of problems that Gazprom itself created,” the spokesman added.

According to him, Gazprom is ready and willing to continue fulfilling its obligations, but obstacles have been created on the European side that prevent the company from working.

“This is really a crisis situation, and here I just want to call to common sense these counterparties of Gazprom, but so far we can only state a large lack of common sense on their part,” Peskov stressed.