WASHINGTON, March 9. /TASS/. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said she believes the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project is currently "dead" and is unlikely to ever be "revived".

During a session of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate on Tuesday, one of the senators asked Nuland if she believes that the sanctions imposed by Washington on Nord Stream 2 should be permanent.

"I think Nord Stream two is now dead<...> I don't think it will ever be revived," she said.

On February 22, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the German government had stopped the certification process of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project after Russia recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. On the following day, US President Joe Biden instructed the administration to impose sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG and representatives of its leadership in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The construction of Nord Stream 2 was fully completed on September 10, 2021. Initially, it was planned to be completed before the end of 2019, but due to Washington’s sanctions, the construction was delayed. The gas pipeline consists of two strings with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year, which run from the coast of Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that Nord Stream 2 is a commercial project and is being implemented jointly with European partners.

Also Victoria Nuland said she would support the establishment of a regular rotational presence of NATO forces in the Black Sea.

"I personally have been in favor of this for a long time. As you know, NATO, like the United States, has a regular schedule of exercises," she said responding to a relevant question during a session of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate on Tuesday.

Nuland also said that after the reunification of Crimea with Russia, Moscow began to deploy " a wide variety of advanced weapons" on the peninsula, which gave it the opportunity to block some sections of the Black Sea in a way that was "unacceptable" to the United States.

Earlier, the head of the Russian delegation at the talks in Vienna on military security and arms control, Konstantin Gavrilov, noted that NATO regularly conducts exercises near Russian borders, and also makes reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea and the Baltic states. He emphasized that Russia under no circumstances would allow the deployment of NATO infrastructure on the territory of the border states.

The Iron Dome anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense systems cannot be promptly delivered to Ukraine, despite Kiev calls, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said at a session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

"I will say only about the "Iron Dome" system. You can't just snap your fingers to make it appear, it requires training, the ability to replace and other things. But there are other things on your list and theirs that we think we can do," Nuland said referring to the requests of the Ukrainian authorities for the supply of weapons and military equipment to them from the West.

Nuland did not go into details but she noted that Washington had recently handed over to Kiev a large number of counter-battery radars.

Nuland refused to answer questions about the political difficulties associated with the supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine at open hearings.

Earlier the Israeli media reported that the government of the Jewish state refused to transfer the Iron Dome missile defense systems to Ukraine. These weapons were created in Israel. The United States is financially involved in the production of Iron Dome.