Russia continues to emphatically demand an investigation into the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Baltic Sea pipelines, which were laid in Germany. Parliament President Vyacheslav Volodin blamed US President Joe Biden for a “terrorist attack” in Moscow on Thursday. He instructed the Duma committees to determine the damage to the gas pipelines. Then foreign assets could be confiscated as compensation. MEPs also called on the United Nations Security Council to launch an investigation.
The explosions in September were aimed at Russia and Germany, Volodin said. The US “carried out” the attack. There is no evidence of US involvement. For days, however, Russian politicians have been working on unsubstantiated claims by US journalist Seymour Hersh, who, citing a single anonymous source, wrote that US Navy divers were responsible for the explosions in the Baltic Sea. The White House dismissed the report as fabrication.
Volodin criticized the fact that even months after the explosions, which attracted attention around the world, there was only silence in the West, even though important energy infrastructure for Europe had been destroyed. The European states “with their great history have become the colonial states of the USA”. Because Russian money is now being confiscated in the West in order to pay for damage in Ukraine, Russia also has the right to confiscate property because of the destruction of the pipelines.
The federal prosecutor’s office is investigating the blasts. At the end of September, the explosions tore four leaks in the two pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 near the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm. Russia had shut down Nord Stream 1 at the time due to alleged technical problems. According to the Kremlin, the Nord Stream 2 line, which can still be used despite the damage, has not yet been approved by the German authorities.