Russian FM says 'clear' that US ordered Nord Stream attacks

MOSCOW: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday it was “clear” that the United States had ordered the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

German prosecutors last week issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man over the blasts on the pipelines, which carried Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea, while The Wall Street Journal reported the explosions were carried out by a Ukrainian crew and approved by Kyiv’s then military commander-in-chief.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Azerbaijan on Monday, Lavrov repeated Moscow’s long-stated claims that the West was involved.

“It is clear that to carry out such a terrorist attack, there was a command from the very top, as they say. The very top for the West is, of course, Washington,” Lavrov told Izvestia newspaper in a video interview published on its Telegram channel.

He said there were “attempts to blame everything on a group of drunken officers,” something he branded “not serious”.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine’s top military commander at the time, Valery Zaluzhny, oversaw the plan to blow up the pipelines used by Russia to deliver gas to Europe.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky approved of the plan, the paper said, but tried to have it aborted once the US CIA told him they were aware of the plans and warned against it.