US and British intelligence agencies were involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, TASS quoted the Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, as saying at the 20th meeting of the Conference of Heads of Security and Intelligence Agencies of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on November 26.
The vital Nord Stream gas pipeline, built to transport Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe, was ruptured by explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in September 2022.
“It has long been known that the West uses international terrorism as a tool to achieve its geopolitical goals. However, Western intelligence agencies themselves do not hesitate to use terrorist methods against their opponents,” Mr. Naryshkin stressed.
According to the Russian foreign intelligence chief, the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline is an example of such methods.
“The SVR has information about the direct involvement of professional saboteurs from the British and American special services in this terrorist attack,” Naryshkin said.
Mr. Naryshkin noted that Nord Stream is a joint project between companies from Russia and other European countries, aimed at providing continuous “cheap Russian gas to Europe.”
“That means Russia built it together with like-minded Europeans, and the British and Americans destroyed it,” Mr. Naryshkin said.
The head of the SVR stressed that “destroying Nord Stream is an obsession not only for the Democratic Party but also for the Republican administration in the United States.”
Nord Stream AG, the company that operates Nord Stream, said on September 27, 2022 that three branches of the offshore gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 had suffered unprecedented damage. Swedish seismologists recorded two explosions along the Nord Stream pipeline on September 26.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office opened a case of international terrorism related to the damage to the pipeline. Germany, Denmark and Sweden announced separate national investigations but refused to let Russia participate in the investigation.
On February 8, 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article, citing a source, that US Navy divers, with the assistance of Norwegian experts, placed explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022.
