MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. US President Joe Biden allegedly postponed the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines from June 2022 to last September out of fear, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh told a German daily.

"Yes, they did it toward the end of the [BALTOPS] exercise [in June 2022]. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The President said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and issued new orders to get an opportunity to remotely detonate the bombs at any time," the Berliner Zeitung quoted Hersh as saying in an interview on Tuesday.

"Joe Biden decided not to blow them up back in June <...>. But in September, he ordered it to be done," the journalist added.

According to Hersh’s article published on February 8, explosives were planted under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines by US Navy divers with assistance from Norwegian specialists under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 exercise last June. The story cited an unidentified source as saying that US President Joe Biden personally authorized the operation after nine months of discussions with administration officials in charge of security matters.

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council at the White House told TASS, replying to the news agency’s question, that the Hersh story was totally false and complete fiction.