BEIJING, February 16. /TASS/. Beijing believes that there is a need for an objective, impartial and professional investigation into the Nord Streams explosions, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a briefing on Thursday.
"An objective, impartial and professional investigation into this explosion incident should be conducted and [the corresponding parties] should be held accountable," Wang Wenbin said in reply to a TASS correspondent’s request to comment on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's call for Western media to examine details of an article by US journalist Seymour Hersh on US involvement in the explosions.
Wang Wenbin noted that Nord Streams were a major transnational infrastructure, and the explosions have had a serious negative impact on the global energy market and the global ecological environment.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on the foreign press to investigate details of American journalist Seymour Hersh's information about the explosions at the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. Earlier, Hersh himself on his page on the Sudstack platform accused the leading media outlets of the United States of suppressing the results of his work.
On February 8, Hersh, who specializes in investigative reporting, stated in an article citing a source that explosive devices had been planted under Russian gas pipelines in June 2022 under the cover of the Baltops exercise by US Navy divers, backed up by Norwegian experts. According to Hersh, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden after nine months of discussions with administration officials involved in national security issues.
In response to a TASS request, White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson slammed the version presented by Hersh "utterly false and complete fiction."