MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/. A situation regarding Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines is first of all was beneficial to the United States, which is interested in a forcible oust of competitors on the natural gas market in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday.

"An answer to the question of who may benefit from such developments is obvious," Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s Argumenty I Fakty daily. "First of all it is beneficial for the United States and its suppliers of expensive LNG [liquefied natural gas] supplying it from across the ocean and who are interested in ousting by force competitors on the European natural gas market."

"I will quote [Russian] President Vladimir Putin here, who announced in his September 30 statement about who was behind the sabotage, actually pointing a finger at the Americans - ‘it is obvious to all who is profiting from this’," Russia’s top diplomat added.

Russian President Putin asserted that the West was responsible for the situation regarding reported damages at the Nord Stream pipelines. According to him, it had already "practically begun to destroy shared European energy infrastructure." He stressed that "it is obvious to all who is profiting from this."

Unprecedented damage to three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines was detected on September 26. Swedish seismologists recorded two explosions along the pipelines. Investigators from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) later opened a criminal case into an act of international terrorism over the blasts. It is currently impossible to figure out how long it will take to restore the pipelines to operational capacity.