UNITED NATIONS, September 27. /TASS/. The US administration had to resort to sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline to retain its influence in Europe, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said.
"More and more evidence is emerging in the expert community that it is Washington who stood behind the disruption of the Nord Stream pipeline and went ahead with this outrageous criminal act guided by a narrowly self-interested desire to consolidate its dominance in Europe, which is in dire need of Russian energy," the Russian diplomat told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
"May I remind that we are not talking about a routine act of rowdiness. We are talking about a terrorist attack that affected international pipe infrastructure and entailed grave economic and environmental consequence for a range of states," he emphasized.
On September 27 last year, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" a day earlier on three strings of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 offshore pipelines. Swedish seismologists had recorded two explosions on the offshore routes of the pipelines on September 26. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office launched criminal proceedings over an act of international terrorism after the gas pipelines were damaged.
On February 8, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article claiming, citing anonymous sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS naval exercise in June 2022, and that the Norwegians then 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 national security advisers.