The White House has denied the allegations of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipeline, calling the content of the report "purely fabricated."

(Midland file photo)

[Central News Agency] Seymour Hersh, a veteran American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, recently accused the United States of being behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany last year. After the report was released, Russia demanded an international investigation. The White House denied the accusation .

Hirsch published a report on the electronic newspaper platform Substack, saying that in June last year, U.S. Navy divers were ordered by President Joe Biden to dive into the Baltic Sea with the assistance of Norwegian authorities. Explosives were placed and detonated after 3 months.

Please read on...

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council of the White House, refuted that the content of the report was "completely fabricated."

A CIA spokesman echoed the White House claim, saying the report was "fictitious throughout."

Asked about Hirsch's claim that authorities in Oslo were also behind the covert operation, Norway's foreign ministry said "these allegations are not true".

The Nord Stream pipeline explosion in September last year was blamed by Western countries on Russia. After the Russian army invaded Ukraine, the incident also intensified Western dissatisfaction with the Moscow authorities.

So far, however, investigations by Swedish, Danish and German authorities have failed to pin blame on any one party or country.

Hirsch pointed to Biden's secret decision to blow up the closed Nord Stream pipeline, which still contains gas remnants, in order to cut off Moscow's ability to make billions of dollars selling gas to Europe.

Hirsch also said that the United States believes that the Nord Stream pipeline will allow Russia to exert political influence on Germany and Western Europe to weaken their aid commitments to Ukraine.

The report pointed out that two weeks before the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Biden himself publicly stated that once Russia attacked Ukraine, the United States would not allow the opening of the new Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline (Nord Stream 2).

Hirsch also cited an unnamed source as saying that the idea of ​​sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline was first proposed in December 2021 when Biden's top national security advisers were discussing how to deal with Russia's expected invasion of Ukraine.

The specific plan was formulated by the CIA, and during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercise in June 2022, U.S. Navy divers placed explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline that could be detonated remotely.

After the report was published, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said that "the published facts should form the basis of an international investigation to bring Biden and his associates to justice" and that the United States should "compensate the victims of the terrorist attacks." Affected countries".

The Russian Foreign Ministry also said today that the United States needs to explain its role in the explosion of the Nord Stream subsea gas pipeline last year.

The Beixi No. 1 and No. 2 natural gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany were damaged by explosions at the end of September last year, causing leakage at four locations, two of which were in the exclusive economic zone of Denmark and the other two were in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden.