Russia calls for international investigation into Nord Stream explosions

Russia has called for an international investigation after famed American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in a new report that the United States was behind the explosions of Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline. In a detailed report published on his blog on Wednesday, Hersh revealed that the bombing of the Nord Stream subsea gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was directly ordered by US President Joe Biden and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist claimed US Navy deep-sea divers placed high-powered C4 explosives under gas pipelines under the guise of NATO naval exercises, and that the Norwegian military then remotely activated the explosives when ordered to do so .

Later in the day, the White House dismissed the report as "absolutely false and complete fiction." The CIA and the US State Department also dismissed the report. On Thursday, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the report should become the basis for an international investigation into the blasts.

"The published facts should become the basis for an international investigation to bring Biden and his accomplices to justice," he said. Volodin also stressed that Washington should "pay compensation to the countries affected by the terrorist attack." “If [former US President Harry S.] Truman became a criminal, using nuclear weapons against civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then Biden became a terrorist, ordering the destruction of the energy infrastructure of his strategic partners: Germany, France and the Netherlands," added the speaker of the State Duma.

Volodin said the alleged sabotage of the pipelines by the Americans was "an act of intimidating their vassals who decided to develop their economy in the interest of their own citizens". Separately, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also responded to Hersh's report on Thursday, warning that the sabotage would have "consequences" for the US. He went on to say that the allegations made in the report "do not come as a surprise" to Moscow, as it was clear from the start who would benefit from the sabotage of Russia's pipelines.

Two of the pipelines, collectively known as Nord Stream 1, have supplied cheap Russian natural gas to Germany and much of western Europe for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, known as Nord Stream 2, had been built but was not yet operational. Already on September 26 last year, three huge gas leaks occurred in the pipelines, which were preceded by a series of explosions. According to Moscow, the massive explosions paralyzed three of the four strands of the Nord Stream network off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm.

Preliminary results of an investigation between Sweden and Denmark showed that the blasts had been "deliberate sabotage", but no culprit has yet been identified. Since then, Moscow has held the West responsible for the damage to the infrastructure.