Russia’s envoy to the US has stated that Washington’s silence in the face of reports alleging Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage is a deliberate tactic.
Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, has accused the US of attempting to place blame for the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines’ sabotage on Ukraine, whom he refers to as US “puppets.”
John Kirby, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report suggesting Ukraine’s role in the Nord Stream attack.
Antonov, in a Telegram post on Friday, asserted that Washington’s avoidance of the issue is “indicative” and tantamount to “latent legitimization of terrorism, even when it comes to the territory of their own allies,” adding “in fact, the US is writing a ‘blank check’ for similar crimes in the future.”
The WSJ reported on Wednesday that a group of Ukrainian military commanders and businessmen orchestrated the 2022 attack which damaged the vital energy infrastructure responsible for transporting Russian gas to Germany and other Western European nations.
According to sources cited by the US outlet, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky initially approved the operation. He reportedly attempted to cancel it later, under pressure from the CIA, but the country’s then-commander-in-chief, Valery Zaluzhny, reportedly informed him that it was too late as the sabotage group had already been deployed and communication was impossible.
Antonov stated that by maintaining silence, the administration of US President Joe Biden “is trying to take the favorable position of an outside observer. They want everyone to forget the inconvenient statements from the US leadership about the importance of destroying the gas pipelines,”
In February 2022, Biden publicly warned that if Russia initiated 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 emphasized.
Antonov stated that Russia, in turn, will persist in efforts to identify and hold accountable “the true culprits” of the Nord Stream explosions, ensuring that such attacks are not repeated.
Top officials in Moscow, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, have previously implicated Washington, arguing that the US benefited most from the sabotage, which disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU, compelling the bloc to rely on more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.
In early 2023, Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, reported that US Navy divers planted explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines under the guise of a NATO exercise, detonating them later upon orders from Biden. The White House dismissed Hersh’s findings as “utterly false and complete fiction.”