Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has accused the US of trying to shift blame for the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines onto its “puppets” in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that a group of Ukrainian military commanders and businessmen masterminded the attack.
According to sources cited by the US outlet, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had initially approved the operation but later tried to call it off following pressure from the CIA. However, Ukraine’s then-commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny told him that it was too late to do it, as the sabotage group had already been dispatched and there was no way to contact it.
The ambassador argued that Washington’s silence on the issue amounts to “latent legitimization of terrorism,” adding that the US is “writing a ‘blank check’ for similar crimes in the future.
In February 2022, Biden openly warned that if Russia launched a military operation against Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.
The officials in Washington are trying to shift all responsibility [for the destruction of Nord Stream] onto their Ukrainian puppets. Although they understand perfectly well that Kiev will not take any step without the ‘go-ahead’ from Washington,” the ambassador stressed.
According to Antonov, Russia will keep working towards identifying and holding accountable “the true culprits” of the Nord Stream blasts and making sure that such attacks will not be repeated in the future.
Top officials in Moscow, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at Washington, arguing that it stood to gain the most from the sabotage that disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU, forcing the bloc to rely on more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.