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No accusations lodged against Russia over damage to Balticconnector pipeline — Kremlin

Operations on the Balticconnector underwater gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia were suspended due to a suspected leak

MOSCOW, October 25. /TASS/. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that no accusations have been lodged against Russia regarding the damage incurred to the Balticconnector gas pipeline.

"No accusations were made [against Russia]," the Kremlin representative told reporters.

"They [in the West] immediately began to speculate about what would happen if Russia had been behind this [incident]. Indeed, just the standard anti-Russian knee-jerk [‘Russia-did-it’ suppositions] that we have seen time and time again," he added.

"But in any event, no one has [actually] accused Russia [of doing anything]. We have said from the very start that any such event-driven speculation would hardly be appropriate until the situation is clarified through the results of a [proper] investigation, which is what happened. In any case, probably, the details are still to be investigated further," the Kremlin official concluded.

Operations on the Balticconnector underwater gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia were suspended due to a suspected leak. Finnish authorities said at a press conference on October 10 that the damage to the gas pipeline, discovered early on the morning of October 9, was likely the result of external interference. Timo Kilpelainen, head of the Investigation Department at the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), said that the damage site was located in Finland's economic zone, in the central part of the Gulf of Finland.

On October 20, the NBI issued a press release stating that the agency is currently focused on determining the possible involvement of a Chinese vessel, the Newnew Polarbear, in causing the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline. Finnish police recovered a foreign object from the seabed near the damaged gas pipeline and, after examination, concluded that it was a ship’s anchor.

Earlier, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that, at the time of the incident, the Chinese-registered ship was sailing in Gulf of Finland waters according to its prescribed course without any deviations from navigational norms.

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