MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Germany must answer all questions posed by Russia regarding the terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a commentary for the daily Izvestia.

"[Germany] must answer all questions. First, they must stop categorically refusing to present the facts that they could not but discover. When at least some of the information we demand is not provided through official channels, but pops up in newspaper articles, and simultaneously in three, I think, German periodicals and in the Wall Street Journal in the United States, this induces the thought that all this was plotted in advance," Lavrov said.

He pointed out that the Ukrainians would not have been able to carry out the attack against the Nord Streams without US support.

"Now we are witnessing attempts to blame everything on a group of some drunken officers who, together with businessmen who was partying with them, either hired someone or decided to learn diving skills themselves. This is not serious," Lavrov said.

"Even if any of the persons mentioned in the German press, Ukrainians, were somehow involved in this, it is clear that they could not have done that alone. It is clear that such a terrorist attack required orders from on high, from the very top, as we say, and the top for the West is Washington, of course," the Russian foreign minister added.

Lavrov is certain that "this whole operation was conceived to somehow divert the public’s attention both in Germany and in the whole world from the true perpetrators, the culprits, and the end beneficiaries of this terrorist act."

"We will insist on a transparent international investigation," he continued. "It is a disgrace for Germany to just silently accept the way it was deprived of the long-term basis of energy supplies and, consequently, of economic prosperity, which was, in general, the key to its development for many decades in the form of steady supplies of reasonably priced Russian gas. Germany [swallowed [this] silently, without any comment.