Putin claims West damaged pipelines

Moscow says it wants international probe

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the West of sabotaging Russia-built gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea to Germany, a charge vehemently denied by the United States and its allies.

Nordic nations said the undersea blasts that damaged the pipelines this week and led to huge methane leaks involved several hundred pounds of explosives.

The claim by Putin came ahead of an emergency meeting Friday at the UN Security Council in New York on the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and as Norwegian researchers published a map projecting that a huge plume of methane released by damaged pipelines will travel over large swaths of the Nordic region.

Speaking Friday in Moscow at a ceremony to annex four regions of Ukraine into Russia, Putin claimed that the “Anglo-Saxons” in the West have turned from sanctions on Russia to “terror attacks,” sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in what he described as an attempt to “destroy the European energy infrastructure.”

He added that “those who profit from it have done it,” without naming a specific country.

Moscow says it wants a thorough international probe to assess the damage to the pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas to Europe. Putin’s spokesman has said “it looks like a terror attack, probably conducted on a state level.”

European nations, which have been reeling under soaring energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have noted that it is Russia, not Europe, that benefits from chaos in the energy markets and spiking prices for energy.

Even before Putin’s comments, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price strongly rejected any claims that the U.S. might have sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines.

“The idea that the United States was in any way involved in the apparent sabotage of these pipelines is preposterous. It is nothing more than a function of Russian disinformation and should be treated as such,” Price said Wednesday.

The U.S. has long been opposed to the two pipelines, saying they increase Europe’s energy dependence on Russia and decrease its security.

Denmark and Sweden, meanwhile, said Friday the explosions that rocked the Baltic Sea ahead of huge methane leaks “probably corresponded to an explosive load of several hundred kilos (pounds).”

The leaks occurred in international waters and “have caused plumes of gas rising to the surface,” said the letter by the two Scandinavian countries’ permanent missions to the United Nations.

NATO warned Thursday it would retaliate for any attacks on the critical infrastructure of its 30 member countries and joined other Western officials in citing sabotage as the likely cause of damage to the natural gas pipelines. Denmark is a NATO member and Sweden is in the process of joining the military alliance.

At the UN, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council while neither Sweden or Denmark will be represented at the meeting Friday as they are not members.

The suspected sabotage this week on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines have produced two methane leaks off Sweden, including a large one above North Stream 1.