The latest news on the Nord Stream case from Politico said that on August 22, Russia responded to the public statement of Czech President Petr Pavel that the Nord Stream pipeline could be a legitimate attack target in the context of the conflict.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova shared: "I have read this speculation, before, only representatives of international terrorist groups had come up with such ideas."
Reports in recent weeks about the Nord Stream incident say that Ukrainian agents are likely to be behind the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. The attack caused many lines of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany to rupture.
Last week, the media reported that after a 19-month investigation into Nord Stream to determine the culprit behind the Baltic gas pipeline explosion, Berlin issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving coach.
On August 21, President of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel commented on the latest developments in the Nord Stream incident on the PoliTalk podcast: "An armed conflict that broke out is not only aimed at military targets but also at strategic targets. And the pipeline is a strategic goal."
The Czech president stressed that he did not have "clear information accusing Ukraine of being behind the attack" but suggested that if the attack was aimed at cutting off oil and gas supplies to Europe as well as preventing cash flow back to Russia, "it would be a legitimate target". "But I don't have that information," the Czech politician noted.
In April, UN officials said the United Nations had no authority to verify any complaints related to the Nord Stream explosion, but many members of the delegations condemned the attack, stressing that it was an attack on civil infrastructure that threatened Europe's economic and energy security. EU gas and wholesale electricity prices hit record highs in the second half of 2022, largely due to disruption of fuel flows from Russia.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" to three of the four lines in the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline systems. Swedish seismologists immediately confirmed that they had identified the Nord Stream pipeline explosions since September 26. After the Nord Stream sabotage, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal investigation into international terrorism.
