MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. Moscow insists that an objective international investigation with its participation should be carried out on the Nord Streams sabotage. The one-sided versions being heard now do little to explain anything, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said.

"I emphasize that any accusations that are not supported by the results of an impartial investigation cannot be trusted. Therefore, Moscow insists on an objective investigation with the participation of Russia and other interested countries. Without this, voicing one-sided subjective versions of the terrorist attack does not explain anything," he told the Argumenty i Fakty weekly on Monday.

According to Patrushev, Russia still did not know for certain who was behind the terrorist attacks at the Nord Stream gas pipelines, and the country has not been included in the investigation of this "unprecedented terrorist act". He stressed that the situation was also complicated by the planting of a fake leak published without any reference to the real source.

"Resolving to cover up the true patrons of the crime, the pro-government Anglo-Saxon media, following orders from above, laid the blame on a certain group of Ukrainian terrorists. In essence, they once again pointed to the terrorist nature of the current Kiev regime. At the same time, the authors of the information campaign thought that no one would object to this version," the Russian Security Council Secretary stressed.

In his opinion, the idea that the US and the UK were not involved in the terrorist attack "is obviously driven by the calculation that the audience lacks the ability to think logically, including the method of denial." "Since newspapers are emotionally claiming that the act of sabotage was carried out by a group of Ukrainian terrorists, the question to ask is whether such a group exists at all and if it’s capable of doing such things. It’s no secret that activities like this require special ops units that are properly trained and equipped," Patrushev noted.

According to the security chief, the US and England certainly have such capabilities. Other NATO countries also use combat swimmers for sabotage tasks but only "with the consent and support of the country that determines the main agenda for NATO," the official explained.

Who benefits

Patrushev also suggested considering who benefited from the attack. "Were the blasts advantageous for Ukraine or Germany? Kiev neither lost nor gained anything from the gas pipeline destruction. Moreover, such an act is not advantageous for the Zelensky regime, which actually begs Berlin to give more military and other aid, and has no use for such an act," he said.

Germany, who for many years has been trying to build its economy based on a combination of cheap energy resources from Russia and advanced German technology, knows better than anyone else that the attack on the pipeline would definitely lead the economy of Germany to a further decline, added the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. "At the same time, Berlin is well aware that close economic cooperation between Germany and Russia has never satisfied Washington and London," he recalled.

Along with that, Patrushev pointed out that it has long been clear that today's German state was not independent: Washington imposed its economic and environmental policy on Berlin and kept a 35,000-strong military contingent on its territory. "It is known that for many years the White House controlled [former German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, and today it is forcing the German leadership to go along with the US authorities' version of the pipeline sabotage. Perhaps that is why [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz was urgently summoned to Washington for a meeting with [US President Joe] Biden. By doing so, the US continues to humiliate Germany, showing it its place," he concluded.

In 2021, a number of media outlets in Germany, Denmark and Sweden reported that Danish intelligence agencies were helping the US National Security Agency spy on European politicians. The scandal began back in 2013, when the Der Spiegel weekly published the revelations of former CIA employee Edward Snowden. Since then, the story has only grown in scope. It turned out that US intelligence had been spying on thousands of targets in Europe for years, bugged citizens of Germany and even connected to Angela Merkel's phone several times when she was chancellor.

About Nord Streams explosions

Nord Stream AG reported that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage on September 27. Swedish seismologists later revealed that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26. After that, investigators from Russia’s Federal Security Service initiated a probe into this act of international terrorism in connection with the explosions.

On February 8, Seymour Hersh, an American journalist who specializes in investigative reporting, stated in an article, citing a source, that explosive devices had been planted under the Russian gas pipelines in June 2022 under the cover of the Baltops exercise by US Navy divers supported by Norwegian experts. According to Hersh, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden after nine months of discussions with administration officials involved in national security issues.

In response to a TASS request, White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson slammed the version presented by Hersh as "utterly false and complete fiction".

Last week, the New York Times, citing US officials, reported that the sabotage of the gas pipelines could have been carried out by some ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ that acted without the knowledge of US authorities. According to the Die Zeit newspaper, German investigators identified the vessel used by the saboteurs. The company that rented it allegedly belonged to Ukrainian citizens and was registered in Poland.