The case is updated.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is demanding answers following allegations that the US was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines – with Norwegian help.
The American journalist Seymour Hersh writes on his blog on Wednesday that navy divers from the United States planted the explosives in June last year.
Three months later, the explosions were detonated remotely using a Norwegian sonar buoy, he writes, without presenting any evidence for the claims.
He also claims that Norway assisted with intelligence and planning in the operation.
Hersh cites only anonymous sources, and the claims have not been verified. The White House in the United States denies the claims and calls it “pure fabrication”, writes Reuters.
– Useless
– It is frivolous fabrication and of course just nonsense, press guard and lieutenant colonel Per Espen Strande in the defense of TV 2.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote the following to TV 2 in a statement on Wednesday evening:
– These claims are of course just nonsense.
Even without proof, the claims have given Russia a boost, which has repeatedly claimed that the US may be behind the sabotage of the pipelines that carried Russian gas to Germany.
Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova has come out and asked the US to clarify its role in the incident.
Still under investigation
Nord Stream 1 and 2, which run under the Baltic Sea, were destroyed by explosions last September. The Swedish authorities concluded in November that the gas pipelines must have been exposed to sabotage.
So far no evidence has been presented that neither Russia, the USA nor anyone else is behind it. German investigators said at the latest last week that no evidence has been found that Russia was behind the explosions.
– At the moment this cannot be proven. The investigation is still ongoing, Germany’s Attorney General Peter Frank told Die Welt newspaper.
Russia has complained several times about not having been sufficiently involved in the investigation.
85-year-old Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1970 for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and has, among other things, covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times.
In his older days, he has been accused of promoting conspiracy theories and has been criticized for repeatedly using “secret sources” that no one else has been able to verify.
