Russia's investigation into the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines is “moving forward” despite the refusal of Western countries to cooperate, Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov has said.
The September 2022 explosions of the key pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany, rendered them inoperable and caused what is believed to be largest single methane leak ever.
It was “a terrorist act, not sabotage as the West is trying to present it,” Krasnov said in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant on Tuesday.
Germany, Sweden, and Denmark all launched separate investigations into the incident, as the explosions happened in the exclusive economic zones of the latter two. However, last month, both the Swedish and Danish probes were aborted. Stockholm said it had come to the conclusion that the case did not fall under Swedish jurisdiction, while Copenhagen found that “there was deliberate sabotage” of the pipelines, but ruled that there were insufficient grounds to pursue criminal proceedings.
Due to the closure of those investigations, “not only were international obligations violated, but the rights of citizens to a benign natural environment were infringed upon and significant economic damage caused,” the prosecutor general said. “It turns out that nobody cares about this,” he stressed.
“Everyone knows perfectly well who did it. However, our so-called partners are turning themselves inside out to hide the circumstances of the Nord Stream explosions,” Krasnov insisted. “The tracks undoubtedly lead beyond the Atlantic,” he added in an apparent reference to the US.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials have previously said that the pipelines had been targeted by Washington or on its behalf.
According to the prosecutor general, Russia sent 15 requests for legal assistance in the investigation of the attack on Nord Stream to Germany, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and Sweden. It only got a reply from Denmark, but it was a formal one, he said.
“The decision by those countries to refuse to cooperate with us indicates that they actually never conducted any real investigations,” Krasnov stressed.
Russia’s own probe into the case is continuing, he said. Experts are now performing tests on explosives to figure out how the pipelines were damaged, how the explosive devices were planted, how powerful they were and other features, he explained.