The damage inflicted on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines was caused by “powerful explosions,” the Danish police said on Tuesday, citing preliminary findings of a Danish-Norwegian probe into the sabotage incident that affected Russia’s vital energy infrastructure project.
“The investigation confirmed that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Danish Exclusive Economic Zone suffered significant damage and that the damage was caused by powerful explosions,” the Danish police said in a statement.
The Copenhagen Police and the Norwegian Police Security Service will establish a joint investigation team that will decide, based on the preliminary findings, where the probe will head next.
This comes after it was discovered on September 26, that unprecedented damage was dealt to three out of four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines were struck in Danish waters near the island of Bornholm. The Swedish and Danish governments announced the discovery of two gas leaks caused by submarine explosions, with the general agreement being that the occurrence was the result of sabotage.
In light of the whole debacle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underlined two days ago that the scenario surrounding Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines is first and foremost beneficial to the United States, which is interested in forcing competitors off the European natural gas market.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of being behind the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines. He said it had already “practically begun to destroy shared European energy infrastructure,” stressing that “it is obvious to all who is profiting from this.”
Investigators from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) later started a criminal investigation into the blasts as an act of international terrorism. It is currently impossible to figure out how long it will take to restore the pipelines to operational capacity.
However, Denmark and Sweden have barred Russia from investigating the attack. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this exclusion highlighted the West’s double standards.
This is despite that Russia may be in possession of valuable leads, such as the finding of a NATO mine destroyer that was discovered around the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline in November 2015.
The Kremlin regrets that the investigation into the Nord Stream terrorist attack is taking place behind closed doors and without interaction with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“One can only express regret that this entire investigation process is taking place in a very, very closed mode, without admission to participation, without interaction with the Russian side, and it is a co-owner of this pipeline system,” he explained.
“And, of course, we do not have the opportunity, in fact, to carry out some work in order to conduct our own investigation. Therefore, one can only express regret here,” Peskov underlined.
He further highlighted that the investigations of other countries look “from a public perspective” as if they are being tailored to the desired results.
“The way it looks from a public perspective, at least according to the statements that we hear, from Germany, from France, from Denmark — this investigation is a priori adjusted to lay responsibility on Russia. This is absurd,” Peskov said. Russian intelligence had quite different information, the top official added.
“This is absurd. The information that our intelligence has, it has already been stated, indicates the opposite. And, of course, you just need to use elementary logic to understand that such sabotage causes great damage to Russian interests,” he concluded
Source: Agencies (edited by Al-Manar English Website)
