MOSCOW, March 23. /TASS/. The bombing of the Nord Streams will go unpunished, and the United States is the main beneficiary of this terrorist attack, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Russian media, including TASS and Vkontakte.

According to him, for this act of terrorism "the perpetrator of the damage in a broad sense of the word should be held accountable: either a country, or a group of persons, or someone else."

"But that is in theory. In reality, of course, no one will answer for this. They will not answer directly. We understand whose interests this is in. However anti-American it may sound, in the end, the main beneficiary is the United States of America," Medvedev said.

As Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council noted, earlier the United States "kept harping" that Russia "got impudent" with its pipeline gas supplies to Europe, which resulted in American liquefied natural gas (LNG) becoming uncompetitive.

"The result was what happened. First, they imposed sanctions on our oil and gas, and then this explosion occurred. It is clear that in this case there is no alternative for supplies," Medvedev stated.

Europeans pay the price

Noting that the malefactor responsible for blowing up the gas pipeline would not pay for its actions, Medvedev recalled that "there are no miracles in the economy," which means someone will have to pay.

"The population of the European Union will pay, and they are already paying - in three ways, as they say. That is, the price of gas has soared 1,000%. Of course, it fluctuates. I periodically scare everyone with some numbers, it [the price] crawled up to 3,000, now it has fallen, but we must understand that even the lowest price is significantly higher than the price at which we once supplied gas," Medvedev explained.

"Consumers have already paid for this. They have already received expensive bills for electricity, for gas, expensive cucumbers, expensive tomatoes, the closure of a number of industries, unprofitable chemicals, and so on," Medvedev summed up. He stressed that, unlike the Europeans, "Americans [as a result of the Nord Stream bombing] are fine."

About sabotage on Nord Stream pipelines

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.

On February 8, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article, which said, citing 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 Norwegians activated the bombs three months later. According to the journalist, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden personally, following nine months of discussions with White House security specialists. White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a comment to TASS that Hersh’s account was "utterly false and complete fiction."

The German government has refrained from speculating about who masterminded the sabotage and asked to await the results of the investigation.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported, citing US officials, that the latest intelligence data suggest a pro-Ukrainian group could have been behind the sabotage at the pipelines. The US government wasn’t aware of the operation, the report said. The German newspaper Die Zeit issued a report that said German investigators had identified the ship that was used by the saboteurs. The company that rented it was allegedly owned by Ukrainian nationals and was registered in Poland.

Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the version put forward by the New York Times was "complete nonsense". The Russian leader stressed that "such explosions - of such power and such depth - can only be carried out by experts with backing from a state that has such capabilities.".