Russia to press UN Security Council over pipeline blast probe

Russia to press UN Security Council over pipeline blast probe

Moscow accuses the West of being behind the explosions and demands an investigation.

Unexplained explosions ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. (AP pic)
MOSCOW:
Russia intends to press the United Nations Security Council again for an international investigation into explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said today.

Unexplained explosions ruptured both Nord Stream 1 and the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carrying gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Russia has repeatedly said the West was behind the blasts. The West and Ukraine have denied involvement.

“We will now bring the UN Security Council back to an examination of this issue,” Zakharova told a regular news briefing.

She said the three Western permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Britain and France – had previously blocked Russia’s efforts to secure a “transparent” investigation of what happened to the pipelines.

Russia and China are also permanent members of the UN body.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was studying all available information about the attacks.

In recent months, US newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has denied Ukraine attacked them.

Some US and European officials initially suggested Moscow had blown up its own pipelines, an interpretation dismissed as idiotic by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, said on Wednesday there was no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies’ undersea communication cables given what he said was Western complicity in the pipeline blasts.

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