Russia on Tuesday accused Germany, Denmark and Sweden of deliberately delaying investigations into the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in an effort to protect those responsible for those attacks.
“The inaction of the European authorities can only be explained in one way: attempts to stop (the investigation) in order to cover up the real perpetrators of the crime,” Russian ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Vasily Nebenzya said in a statement. a meeting of the Security Council.
“The Russian Federation will continue to bring the issue of the Nord Stream sabotage to the Council until those responsible are identified and brought to trial,” he insisted.
Russia has convened a meeting of the UN Security Council to criticize the lack of results in the national investigations carried out by Denmark, Germany and Sweden into the sabotage that took place in September 2022 on the two Nord Stream gas pipelines at sea Baltic.
However, Western countries accused Moscow of using the Security Council as a platform for disinformation, after calling three meetings in less than a month to discuss these explosions.
“As other diplomats have noted, this is the third time in less than a month that Russia has asked the Security Council to discuss the destruction of Nord Stream. Russian efforts to try to use this Council as a platform for disinformation are as cynical as they are transparent,” US Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis said.
For the meeting on Tuesday, Moscow invited two journalists who called themselves “independent” and who defended the existence of “Western complicity” to hide those responsible for the explosion.
However, several diplomats chose to criticize the frequency with which Russia has convened meetings on the subject even though the investigations are still ongoing and there is no new factor for discussion.
“We remain confident in the competent and credible investigations being carried out in Germany, Sweden and Denmark. We thank these countries for their commitment to impartial investigations and their recent letter on the matter to the Council. Russia’s unfounded concerns about transparency and impartiality of these investigations ring as hollow as his claims that he had no connection to the Wagner group and was not planning to invade the Ukraine,” DeLaurentis said.
The French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Rivière, considered “a contradiction” the fact that Russia is concerned about the critical infrastructure of the gas pipelines, when it attacks Ukrainian infrastructure on a daily basis.
“Instead of calling pipeline meetings and wasting the council’s time on an ongoing investigative process, Russia could be more helpful and productive and withdraw its troops from Ukraine,” said Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s ambassador.
The British diplomat, James Kariuki, revealed that in the recent letter sent to the Council, Germany, Sweden and Denmark highlighted the complexity of the ongoing investigations and stressed that this process will take time.
Last March, the Security Council rejected a Russian proposal to launch an international investigation into the blasts, with most members advocating further investigations by Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
The attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines, which were not in service at the time of the incident, occurred on September 26, 2022, causing two leaks in each of them: two in the Danish area and two in the Swedish area, all in international waters.
Source: TSF
