Officials in the Kremlin are accusing the West of deliberately ignoring veteran journalist Seymour Hersh’s report that the U.S. was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year.
In an article published on the Substack blogging platform, Mr. Hersh said U.S. Navy divers last June planted explosives on the undersea pipelines running between Russia and Germany and detonated them three months later.
The pipelines had been supplying much of Western Europe with natural gas for several years, and President Biden saw them as a means for Russian President Vladimir Putin to finance his political and military schemes, according to the report.
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the West is trying to “quietly wind down” any investigations into what Moscow said was a terrorist strike on the pipelines.
“This report should provoke an acceleration of international investigations,” Mr. Peskov said, according to the official TASS news agency. “On the contrary, we see attempts to silently curtail this international investigation.”
Russia has blamed the explosions on the West and said it was an attempt to sabotage its natural gas industry.
The White House flatly rejected allegations of U.S. involvement in the pipeline explosions, calling it a “complete fiction.”
Western governments have not yet made a formal finding of responsibility for the incident, but several leaders hinted that Russia was behind it.
Mr. Hersh, best known for breaking the story of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, cited a single unnamed source for his report on the Nord Stream explosions. He said the plan was developed by the CIA and carried out by Navy divers under the cover of the BALTOPS 22 naval exercise.
According to reports, the CIA also denied any involvement in the explosions, which remain under investigation.
