MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. Sweden’s decision to close its investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions may be due to its fear of the truth, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.

"In this particular case, the Swedish authorities - for reasons none of which can be explained logically but one - from the very start showed a lack of serious determination to push the matter through and even address the issue. However, there is a logical explanation. It’s their fear of uncovering the truth about what really happened to the Nord Stream pipelines in the Swedish economic zone," she noted.

According to Zakharova, this is particularly indicated by the fact that the Swedish prosecution had repeatedly rejected Russia’s calls to ensure a transparent and careful investigation into the act of sabotage, engaging the relevant Russian officials and Gazprom’s personnel.

The Swedish prosecution announced earlier that it had closed an investigation into the incident due to a lack of jurisdiction. Sweden handed the evidence it had uncovered over to Germany.

Nord Stream explosions

The Nord Stream AG company 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 opened a case into an act of international terrorism over damage to the pipelines.

On February 8, 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article, citing a source, that US Navy divers, with the assistance of Norwegian specialists, had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in June 2022. The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that a certain "pro-Ukrainian" group might have committed the act of sabotage on the gas pipelines.