Russia on Thursday dispatched the ambassadors of Denmark, Germany and Sweden to protest what it said was its denial of Russian involvement and its lack of transparency about investigations into “sabotage attacks on Nord Stream gas pipelines.”
The foreign ministry said the three European Union countries have not responded to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s request sent in October asking for representatives of the Kremlin’s PJSC and Gazprom to participate in missions investigation into the September incidents. He said they have also ignored similar warnings from Russian embassies.
“On the contrary, it is clear from their actions that they have been prolonging the time necessary to reach any conclusion in order to try to hide the evidence and the real perpetrators of this crime which, we believe, involves some countries,” the ministry said in a press release.
The Swedish government prosecutor overseeing the Stockholm investigation had acknowledged that the “detonations” that affected both pipelines of the twin Baltic Sea gas carrier, which lies partly in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark, could have been orchestrated by a government.
“We have a pretty clear picture at the crime scene of who committed it,” Mats Ljungqvist told Russian state news agency TASS in comments on a Swedish update on the investigation on April 10. “It cannot be ruled out that there are some private individuals who could have been the perpetrators. However, our main advantage is, of course, that there is a government behind it, directly or indirectly.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said on February 8, 2023, citing an “anonymous source with direct knowledge of operational planning,” that the US government had orchestrated the sabotage with the help of the Norwegian navy. As Russian troops arrived on the border with Ukraine and war loomed, “President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for [Russian President] Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions,” he wrote in a blog post on Substack.com.
Hersh said the attack ordered by Biden had been executed through remotely fired explosives planted in June 2022 “under cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO. [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] exercise known as BALTOPS 22”.
The White House and Pentagon denied the claims in comments to TASS on the same day Hersh published the article.
The Danish Energy Agency said on March 29, citing local authorities from Denmark’s Ministry of Defense, that an empty marine smoke buoy had been recovered near pipeline two in the presence of a representative of Nord Stream AG.
Operator Nord Stream AG is 51 percent owned by Russia’s majority state-owned Gazprom. Germany’s PEGI/E.ON and Wintershall Dea AG each have 15.5 percent, and Dutch NV Nederlandse Gasunie and France’s ENGIE each have nine percent, according to Switzerland-based Nord Stream AG.
The twin pipelines, which stretch a total of 760.56 miles (1,224 kilometers) between exporter Russia and destination Germany, have a combined annual capacity of about 1.94 trillion cubic feet (55 billion cubic meters ) of gas, according to Nord Stream AG’s website. This capacity is, as stated on the site, “enough to meet the energy demand of more than 26 million European households”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry told the envoys that Moscow “intended to persist in its effort to compel the FRG authorities.” [Federal Republic of Germany]Denmark and Sweden to conduct an objective and comprehensive investigation into the sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines with the mandatory inclusion of Russia.”
The United Nations Security Council on March 27 rejected Russia’s request for an investigation, with only China and Brazil joining in the favorable vote.
Earlier Thursday, the foreign ministry said it had decided to expel five Swedish diplomats and close Sweden’s consulate general in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Stockholm’s expulsion of five Russian diplomats last month.
The consular office was ordered to close on September 1, while Sweden’s consulate general in Gothenburg would be suspended, the ministry said in another media release.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, in a statement on the same day, denounced the action, insisting that the expulsion of the Russian diplomats was due to their “activities that were incompatible with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.” .
The statement posted on the Swedish government’s website said Russia’s retaliation confirmed “the negative political developments in Russia and the country’s international isolation.”
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