Kremlin Says No Mechanisms in Place to Exchange Info on Nord Stream Sabotage with Kiev
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – There are no mechanisms in place to exchange information about the sabotage on the Nord Streams between Russia and Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Commenting on a remark by Andrey Derkach, a Ukrainian politician and public activist, who said earlier on Tuesday that all Ukrainians who covered up the blowing-up of the natural gas pipelines had been identified, Peskov said: "We have no mechanisms for exchanging information with (Ukraine), and one can hardly imagine the availability of any now."
When asked about whether Kiev had shared any information about the Nord Stream explosions with Moscow, the Russian presidential spokesman said such information, if it is of any value at all, "is something that the Dutch, the Swedes and others should scrutinize," TASS reported.
Earlier, Derkach said that all the members of the group of Ukrainians who took part in the cover-up the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines had been identified.
In an interview with BelTA released on the news agency’s YouTube channel, he recalled that the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office had earlier forwarded Russian lawmakers’ requests and addresses to the United States, Germany, France and Cyprus regarding the blowing-up of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office initiated a criminal case on charges of international terrorism.
Later, noted American journalist Seymour Hersh published an article, citing anonymous sources inside Washington, claiming that the explosive devices were placed under the gas pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers with the assistance of Norwegian specialists, and then were detonated in September. Subsequently, the New York Times quoted US officials as saying that the sabotage of the gas pipelines could have been carried out by an unidentified "pro-Ukrainian group" that acted without the knowledge of US authorities.
