BERLIN, October 18. /TASS/. Russia sees no legal obstacles for the joint work with European countries on investigating into the incidents at Nord Stream pipelines, Russian Ambassador to the country Sergey Nechayev said in an interview with TASS, adding that the refusal to cooperate would be regarded as an attempt to hold back the truth.
"Judging by incoming information, our western colleagues are facing problems with the creation of a joint investigation team [Germany, Denmark, Sweden], meaning they are even not ready to share the results of the investigation with each other, which I believe is really telling," he said. "As far as our participation is concerned, when contacting the German executive authorities, we initially stressed the lack of alternatives to attracting representatives of qualified Russian agencies and Gazprom to establishing the circumstances of the incident," the diplomat noted, adding that "respective requests had been delivered through official channels."
"Since the issue is about an act of sabotage against a critical infrastructure facility, according to all indications, it is necessary to form an utterly full and true picture of what happened. Russian specialists have the full scope of competence for doing that. There are no legal obstacles for starting the joint work," Nechayev said. "We will regard the refusal to cooperate with Russia in clarifying the circumstances of the incident as an obvious attempt to hold back the truth," he noted.
Earlier, Germany’s ARD television channel said citing sources in the German government that Germany, Sweden and Denmark had given up plans to jointly investigate the sabotage at the Nord Stream pipelines, planning to do it alone. In its turn, Der Spiegel reported that Sweden would not share its findings from the investigation into the incidents at Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines with Germany and Denmark, referring to its high security classification level.
On September 27, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred on the previous day at three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. Swedish seismologists registered two explosions recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines.