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Russia says US should prove it did not destroy Nord Stream
Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last September "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug, the embassy said in a statement.
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This handout photo released on September 27, 2022 and taken from an aircraft of the Swedish Coast Guard (Kustbevakningen) shows the release of gas emanating from a leak on a Nord Stream gas pipeline, with the leak measuring over 950 meters in diameter, in the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm. (AFP/handout)
T
he United States should try to prove it was not behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that connected Russia to Western Europe, the Russian embassy to the United States said on Thursday.
Moscow considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines last September "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug, the embassy said in a statement.
The embassy referred to a blog post by journalist Seymour Hersh citing an unidentified source as saying that US Navy divers had destroyed the pipelines with explosives on the orders of President Joe Biden.
The White House has dismissed the allegations as "utterly false and complete fiction".
US Department of State spokesman Ned Price said on Wednesday "it is pure disinformation that the United States was behind what transpired" with Nord Stream, provoking the fresh Russian comment.
Last week, the Kremlin endorsed the blog post by Hersh and said it should be taken seriously.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a "very serious" article that had a "deep analysis."
"It would be unfair not to give it attention," he said. "Unfortunately, the article was not widely disseminated in the Western media, which cannot but cause our surprise."
Peskov said Moscow had information "on the involvement of the Anglo-Saxons in the organisation of this act of sabotage", a claim Russia has made repeatedly but without providing any evidence publicly.
Western countries have blamed the September pipeline explosions on Russia, but Moscow has accused the West of sabotage.
Hersh, an 85-year-old veteran investigative journalist, has in recent years been accused of spreading conspiracy theories.
