MOSCOW, February 21. /TASS/. The Americans admitted in a publication in Der Spiegel magazine that they knew everything about the terrorist attacks on the Nord Streams, former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010-2014) Nikolay Azarov said in an interview with TASS.
"Since the explosion at Nord Streams, I have had no doubt that the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States and, most likely, the leadership of the United States not only possessed the information, but most likely organized and participated in the bombing," Azarov said.
"In fact, the Americans have now confessed, through the publication in Spiegel, that they knew all this."
According to the former prime minister, such an operation, which certainly came to the attention of the intelligence services of the NATO countries and the alliance itself, "simply could not have happened without the knowledge of the United States."
Der Spiegel magazine reported that the Ukrainian saboteurs who allegedly blew up the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 pipelines expected the CIA to pay for the operation, but in the end the money was allocated by a private Ukrainian "sponsor."
According to the magazine, at first, American agents discussed plans with the Ukrainians to blow up the pipelines and did not raise objections. The US allegedly informed the participants of the operation only in the early summer of 2022 that it was opposed to the plan and would not be able to provide financing. The rationale for this decision was not given, the magazine writes. As a result, the operation was allegedly funded by a private "sponsor" from Ukraine. He allocated $300,000 to cover the costs of equipment, yacht rental and purchase of explosives, the sources told the magazine.
On September 26, 2022, an unprecedented terrorist attack was carried out on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines, as a result of which only one line of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline system survived. The 1,224 km long Nord Stream gas pipeline runs along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Vyborg in Russia to Greifswald in Germany, with a capacity of 55 billion cubic meters per year. The construction of the similar-capacity Nord Stream 2 was completed on September 10, 2021, but the pipeline was not put into operation. Russia’s Prosecutor General's Office initiated a case on an act of international terrorism.