MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Russian State Duma (parliament's lower chamber) Committee on Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday’s New York Times article suggesting that a pro-Ukrainian group could be behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines was a "yet another red herring."

"The NYT article is a yet another red herring, aimed at distracting the public from real perpetrators by pointing to an abstract rebel group. But who would believe that an operation of this scope, which essentially is of military nature, can be carried out by a previously unknown sabotage group?" Slutsky wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.

In his opinion, this article should become a wake-up call for the Kiev government and President Vladimir Zelensky, "indicating that he and his ‘rebels’ will be cast away when the heat is on in Washington."

The New York Times reported earlier on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources, that US intelligence has so far been unable to identify the mastermind of last September's sabotage attacks that targeted the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which transported natural gas from Russia to Europe. The anonymous officials interviewed by the newspaper said there had been no firm conclusions about those responsible, thus leaving open "the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services."

However, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on February 8 published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were planted by US Navy divers, helped by Norwegian specialists, under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that the CIA and Burns took part in the preparation of the operation, and US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation after nine months of deliberations with the administration’s national security staff.

On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines. On September 26, 2022, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office launched a criminal case based on charges of international terrorism.