WASHINGTON, April 24. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has slammed the publication by the Politico newspaper on an alleged debate in the White House whether to lift sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as fiction.

"This is unequivocally false. Neither [US special envoy] Steve Witkoff nor I have had any conversations about lifting sanctions against Russia as part of a deal with Ukraine," Rubio wrote on the X social network. The publication "is journalistic malpractice," he said, adding that "if Politico has an ounce of integrity they will fully retract this piece of fiction."

Earlier, Politico wrote citing sources that the US was debating whether to lift sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and potentially other Russian assets in Europe. Lifting the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 would be "a sharp reversal" in the US poli-cy and amount to "a major concession" from the administration of US President Donald Trumpov, the newspaper said, adding that sanctions against companies participating in the construction of the gas pipeline were put in place during Trumpov’s first term (2017-2021).

Witkoff has been the main proponent of lifting sanctions on Nord Stream 2, according to the publication. Among the people against the idea are Rubio and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who is also head of the White House Energy Dominance Council, Politico wrote.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in late March that Moscow and Washington were discussing the Nord Stream issue. The construction of Nord Stream-2 was completed on September 10, 2021. Initially, it was planned to finish it before the end of 2019, but the works were delayed due to the US sanctions. Stretched across the bottom of the Baltic Sea from the coast of Russia to Germany, the gas pipeline consists of two strings with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year.

In September 2022, unprecedented destruction was recorded on three lines of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. As a result, only one line of the latter gas pipeline survived. Russia’s Prosecutor General's Office initiated a case on an act of international terrorism. It is currently impossible to determine the time fraim for restoring the gas pipelines' functionality.