BEIJING, September 25. /TASS/. The lack of coherent results of a probe being conducted by Western countries into the sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines looks unbelievable, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson told a TASS reporter.
"It’s perplexing that the countries that call themselves open and transparent keep mum on the Nord Streams," Wang Wenbin said, commenting on the natural gas pipelines that were sabotaged a year ago.
According to the Chinese diplomat, security at such critical infrastructure as the Nord Streams is a common concern of the international community.
Now, almost a year on since the sabotage, there has been very little progress in the investigation, Wang lamented. He expressed his hope that "the countries involved would respond to the doubts and concerns raised by the international community."
Nord Stream AG reported on September 27, 2022, that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage. Swedish seismologists recorded two explosions along the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office subsequently opened a case into an act of international terrorism. Germany, Denmark and Sweden launched separate national investigations but refused to involve Russia in the investigative procedures. Reports, citing various sources, emerged later in the US and European media claiming that Ukrainian groups unaffiliated with the Kiev authorities may have been involved in the sabotage.
Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist Seymour Hersh, in turn, maintained, citing intelligence sources, that the terrorist attack had been carried out by a US military underwater demolition team on orders from President Joe Biden.