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Russian Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Vasily Nebenzya urged the UN Security Council to launch an investigation into the attacks on Nord Stream gas pipelines in September last year, saying the UN is capable of establishing mechanisms to investigate such an incident after UN said it had no mandate.
Nebenzya made the remarks during an interview with Rossiya 1 TV channel on Sunday.
Russia gave a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on February 17, asking UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to begin an international investigation into the Nord Stream gas pipelines blasts and identify the perpetrators.
Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said the aim was to put the text to a vote within a week. A council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, Britain, France, China or Russia to pass.
Two days earlier, Russia’s attempt to call a meeting of the UN Security Council on February 22 to discuss the “sabotage” of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was refused by the UN, as spokesperson for the UN Secretary General Stephane Dujarric said that the UN did not have the authority to investigate the incident.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded on the day that Moscow did not accept such claim.
Russia also called for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to inspect the incident. The country’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Saturday said that NATO should hold an emergency meeting to discuss the recent findings about the incident.
“There are more than enough facts here – the explosion of the pipeline, the presence of a motive, circumstantial evidence obtained by journalists,” Zakharova said on messaging platform Telegram.
“So when will an emergency NATO summit meet to review the situation?” she asked.
On February 15, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970, said in a blog post, citing an unidentified source, that U.S. Navy divers helped by Norway had planted explosives on the pipelines running under the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany last June and detonated them three months later.
Hersh alleged the decision to bomb the pipelines, which were shut down but contained residual gas, was made in secret by U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off Moscow’s ability to earn billions of dollars from natural gas sales to Europe.
The U.S. also believed pipelines gave Russia political leverage over Germany and Western Europe that could be used to weaken their commitment to Ukraine after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, according to Hersh.
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson described the report as “complete fiction,” while a Central Intelligence Agency spokesperson called the report “completely and utterly false.”
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to double the volume of gas that Russia could send directly to Germany under the sea, was completed in September 2021, but was never put into operation after Berlin shelved certification just days before Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine last February.
Sweden and Denmark, in whose exclusive economic zones the blasts occurred, have both concluded the pipelines were blown up deliberately, but have not said who might be responsible.
The U.S. and NATO have called the incident “an act of sabotage.” Some Western officials have also blamed Russia for the attack – a claim refuted by Moscow.
