Russia says UK blew up Nord Stream gas pipelines
Russia has accused the British navy personnel of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines transferring Russian gas to Europe.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that “British specialists” blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month in a “terrorist attack.”
“[T]his unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year - blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines,” the ministry said, accusing the UK of sabotaging critical Russian infrastructure.
The British Navy personnel from the same unit also directed Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea, the ministry said.
Certain Western countries accuse Russia of being behind the explosions in the pipelines. Russia has previously accused the West for the damage to the infrastructure.
Sweden and Denmark have both concluded that four leaks on Nord Stream 1 and 2 were caused by explosions, but have not said who might be responsible.
The UK Defense Ministry responded on Saturday, denying that its specialists were involved in attacks on the gas pipelines and the Russian navy's Black Sea Fleet. The ministry tweeted, "To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale."
The British Defense Ministry claimed the "invented story says more about arguments going on inside the Russian Government than it does about the West."
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Moscow will seek reaction from the UN Security Council. She said in a post Moscow wanted to draw attention to "a series of terrorist attacks committed against the Russian Federation in the Black and Baltic Seas, including the involvement of Britain in them."
In the meantime, Russian energy operator Gazprom has announced that the severity of the damage to the undersea pipelines is so deep Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route.
Just days after the explosion, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his joy, saying the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was a “tremendous opportunity” to repel European Union states from turning to Russian energy resources amid the upcoming winter cold.
Blinken said at a press briefing in Washington in early October that now that Russia had stopped pumping gas to Europe, the US had turned into “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas (LNG)] to Europe.”
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” the top US diplomat said.
“There’s a lot of hard work to do to make sure that countries and partners get through the winter,” Blinken said.
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