MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. Russia intends to appeal to the UN International Court of Justice if Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland fail to conduct a fair and transparent investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The Russian side intends to seek justice through all available means under international law. Our country has already formally lodged pre-litigation claims against Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland on the basis of the 1997 International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. If the issue is not resolved at this stage, then Russia intends to take the matter to trial and appeal to the International Court of Justice regarding the violation of treaty obligations by the aforementioned parties," she said at a briefing.

Zakharova noted that Russia’s position remains unchanged: Moscow demands "a fair, open, and impartial investigation, not a fake one based on journalists’ speculation, supposedly founded on access to some secret materials." "If secret materials exist, let them come to light during the course of the investigation. If the investigation is working with secret materials, everyone involved in this process as an affected party must be granted access to those secret materials," she concluded.

On September 26, 2022, an unprecedented terrorist attack targeted the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, leaving only one of the four strings of Nord Stream 2 intact. The 1,224-kilometer Nord Stream pipeline runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Vyborg, Russia, to Greifswald, Germany, with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year. Construction of Nord Stream 2, which has a comparable capacity, was completed on September 10, 2021, but the pipeline was never put into operation. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has launched an investigation into an act of international terrorism.