UNITED NATIONS, April 26. /TASS/. The investigation of what happened at the Nord Stream gas pipelines requires international cooperation, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasiily Nebenzya said.
"Once Denmark and Sweden have recognized their impotence and Germany is saying nothing about its investigation, if any at all, it should be evident to all that it will be possible to establish the circumstances of the incident only thanks to cooperation of the international community, in spite the efforts of the United States and some other countries to sweep things under the rug," he said at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
"If we don’t do this, we will find ourselves in a world with no rules and laws and any other state may become the next victim of a terrorist attack against critical transnational pipeline infrastructure committed by notorious advocated of the ‘rule-based order,’" he said.
According to Nebenzya, the real goal of the West, which is seeking to persuade the world of the futility of international efforts, is "to keep on telling the tale of lost time" as long as possible in a hope that "international community will forget about this terrorist attack."
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a case on charges of international terrorism. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched their own national probes but refused to involve Russia.
On February 8, 2023, US investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh published an article that claimed, citing anonymous sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022, and that the Norwegians then activated the bombs three months later. According to the journalist, Danish and Swedish authorities were aware of US’ activities in the Baltic Sea several months before the Nord Stream blasts. That is why, in his words, they opted to fail their probes.
The New York Times said later, citing US officials, that the act of sabotage at the gas pipelines could have been committed by a "pro-Ukrainian group" acting independently.