Russia says West trying to confuse the world over Nord Stream culprits

The Russian embassy in the United States has said that Washington knew of a Ukrainian plan to attack the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines and this was part of a coordinated Western attempt to confuse the world over the truth.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing leaked information posted online, that the CIA learned last June, through a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to blow up the pipeline.

"The coordinated campaign of the West, led by the United States, to confuse the international community is sewn with white threads," Russian diplomat Andrey Ledenev was quoted as saying in a post on the embassy's Telegram messaging channel on Wednesday.

"The reason for the proliferating theories and versions, supported by the notorious 'confidential' data of the local intelligence community, is simple to the point of banality."

Deliberate attacks

Several underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark.

Both countries said the explosions were deliberate, but have yet to determine who was responsible. Those countries and Germany are investigating.

The Kremlin said in February that the world should know the truth about who sabotaged the pipelines and that those responsible should be punished after an investigative journalist said US divers blew them up at the behest of the White House.

Russia has repeatedly said the West was behind the blasts affecting the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines last September - multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects that carried Russian gas to Germany.