MOSCOW, September 29. /TASS/. When speaking to the Soloviev Live TV channel on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called out US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claim that attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines would be in no one’s interest as a bold-faced lie.

"When Mr Blinken says that the project’s collapse is in no one's interest, it sounds ridiculous, it’s a lie," she maintained.

Zakharova pointed out that in previous years, the then Republican-led US administration "did everything to scuttle" the Nord Stream 2 project. "They employed methods of political pressure and blackmail, which are illegal and go beyond morality, law and logic, and they also used their diplomatic resources to exert direct pressure, particularly on the German authorities. <...> The Democrats took a different path," the Russian diplomat noted.

The Nord Stream AG company earlier reported that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage on Monday. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow was "deeply concerned about the news" and did not rule out that the pipelines’ operation could have been disrupted by an act of sabotage. Swedish seismologists later reported that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on Monday. Sweden’s Coast Guard discovered another gas leak from the pipelines on Thursday.