Murphy on Nord Stream 2 Sanctions Vote: If This Bill Passes, It Will Be a Gift to Russia

Press Release

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Thursday slammed Senate Republicans on the U.S. Senate floor for their efforts to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts to deter further Russian aggression in Ukraine. Murphy explained why Senator Cruz's sanctions bill would not stop the completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline from becoming operational, and instead, how it would divide us from our European partners and empower Russia.

Murphy criticized the ineffective sanctions in Senator Cruz's Nord Stream 2 sanctions bill: "The sanctions in this bill are, unfortunately, pretty feckless. They're feckless because they can be undone easily, within 30 to 60 days, by the Russian government. The reality is if we don't convince our European partners to stop moving forward with this project, there's no amount of U.S. sanction that can be effective here. What we know is even if you were to sanction this German-Swiss company, German board of directors, in a matter of days, weeks, maybe a few months, the Russians could reengineer the financing and the administration of the project to keep it going."

Murphy continued: "[T]hink about this from the German perspective. They finally said yes to the United States. And the minute that they say yes is the minute that the United States Senate decides to sanction German citizens. That's bad diplomacy…We need to be sending a message to Vladimir Putin that the United States and Europe are together and that we are going to deliver a crushing package of sanctions if you enter Ukraine any further. This would be a gift to Vladimir Putin because it's a signal of division at a moment when we need to be standing together.

On the Defending Ukraine Sovereignty Act of 2022, which he cosponsors, Murphy said: "Senator Menendez has proposed a bill which I think can draw support from 90% of this body that enacts a set of sanctions on Russia if Russia moves any further into Ukraine, beyond where they are already in eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That sends the right signal. That's an effective message of consequence rather than this proposal which apparently is a set of sanctions Republicans are going to ask to be waived and divides us from our partners at a moment when we need to be together."

Murphy also debunked Senator Cruz's argument that pipeline construction stopped after the previous sanctions bill under former President Trump: "Senator Cruz says that the construction of the pipeline stopped when Congress passed the Nord Stream sanctions and didn't begin again until Joe Biden became president. I've seen that repeated in the press. And it just isn't true. One company that was laying the pipeline backed out of the project when the 2019 sanctions bill was passed, but then guess what happened? Russia started retrofitting other ships to finish the job, and the minute that they were permitted, construction began again. Not when Joe Biden was president--when Donald Trump was president. The ships were ready in May of 2020, before Joe Biden was even nominated, and they started work a few months later as soon as the Danish government permitted them."

Murphy slammed Senate Republicans for their hypocrisy in holding up President Biden's State Department nominees over Nord Stream 2: "[I]n 2020, Senator Cruz didn't hold up any of Donald Trump's State Department nominees when Trump was refusing to implement sanctions, when the Russians sent ships that started showing up to restart construction. Not even when construction restarted in the fall of 2020. Nope, during this time all of Trump's State Department nominees sailed through without a single Republican objection or blockade."

"This bill isn't going to help Ukraine. It's designed to hurt the President of the United States, and, unfortunately, some--not all, not all--but some of our Republican colleagues here have consistently put their desire to politically harm President Biden ahead of their desire to protect the nation," Murphy concluded.

This week, Murphy co-sponsored the Defending Ukraine Sovereignty Act of 2022, critical legislation to impose steep costs in the event of a renewed Kremlin invasion of Ukraine.

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