Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, criticised attempts by Western media on Thursday to place the blame for the explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines on a Ukrainian oligarch as dishonourable.
At a news conference after talks with the Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud, Lavrov said, “I think the attempts to explain, with reference to some Western intelligence services, that a certain Ukrainian oligarch was behind these (blasts on the petrol pipelines – TASS) are shameful for all those who have been pushing such a version through Western media outlets.
The senior diplomat for Russia criticised what he called the shameful coverage of the explosions in Western media and promised that the reports would not go ignored. He bemoaned that the UN Secretariat had been “completely inactive and distant” in response to Moscow’s request for an impartial investigation into the event.
“The secretary general and his representatives have been questioned by journalists on the need to look into the hysterical reports that have surfaced regarding how the West feels about the terrorist assault on the Nord Streams last September. Both the [UN] secretary general and his staff have avoided these legitimate inquiries, “Lavrov continued.
According to US officials quoted in a New York Times article on Tuesday, the most recent intelligence data point to a pro-Ukrainian group perhaps being responsible for the sabotage at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. German newspaper Zeit reported on Tuesday that the ship used by the saboteurs had been located by German authorities. It was rented out by a firm that was registered in Poland and purportedly owned by Ukrainian people.
On September 26, 2022, Nord Stream AG stated that three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore petrol pipelines had sustained unprecedented damage the previous day. Swedish seismologists noted two explosions on the pipeline routes on September 26. On the basis of allegations of international terrorism, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a criminal investigation.
