The British Navy stands accused by the Russian authorities, with out proof, of blowing up the Nord Stream pure gasoline pipeline underneath the Baltic Sea, a declare the U.Ok. rejected as “false.”
“In line with accessible data, representatives … of the British Navy took half within the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist assault within the Baltic Sea on September 26 this yr — blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gasoline pipelines,” the Russian Protection Ministry mentioned on Saturday, in line with media studies.
The accusation didn’t embody any additional data or proof to help claims of state sabotage. The Russian authorities additionally mentioned that U.Ok. operatives helped plan a drone assault on its fleet on the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Saturday.
The U.Ok. Protection Ministry rapidly denied Moscow’s declare.
“To detract from their disastrous dealing with of the unlawful invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Protection is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” the British ministry mentioned in a tweet. “This invented story says extra about arguments occurring contained in the Russian authorities than it does in regards to the West.”
Russia had already blamed the West typically phrases for undersea explosions that broken the Nord Stream pipes final month. These blasts have seemingly rendered the vitality infrastructure unusable, in accordance to the German authorities.
An investigation by Danish and Swedish authorities is ongoing into the explosions, which befell inside the 2 international locations’ unique financial zones near the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.
Russia had already stopped gasoline transit by way of the pipeline sparking considerations earlier this yr that it might use gasoline provide to blackmail Europe as its brutal conflict on Ukraine continues.
Whereas the first section of Nord Stream had been working for practically 11 years, the second section of the venture — dubbed Nord Stream 2 — had not but been introduced into business operation.
