Russia detains saboteurs trying to blow up TurkStream

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The Russian authorities have detained several saboteurs as they were trying to sabotage and blow up a part of the TurkStream pipeline that is on Russian territory, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.

TurkStream is an energy infrastructure project that spans 930 km, starts in Russia, and extends into Turkey, supplying the latter with Russian gas.

"Saboteurs were taken, several people were detained - they wanted to blow up [TurkSteam] on our territory, on land," Peskov told reporters. The pipeline starts in the Russian Krasnodar region.

Despite the new EU sanctions imposed in September on TurkStream operator South Stream Transport B.V., which revoked the pipeline's operator of its export license, South Stream Transport issued a statement saying gas transportation would continue uninterrupted.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan disclosed that he did not expect Turkey to experience any energy deficits this year. "I think Europe will have serious issues this winter, we do not have such a situation," he said.

Moscow does not have the habit of "shooting itself in the leg", Peskov added, dismissing remarks made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said Russia was planning on sabotaging its infrastructure of gas pipelines.

"We do not tend to shoot ourselves in the leg," Peskov underlined.

This comes after it was discovered on September 26, that unprecedented damage was dealt to three out of four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin touched on the issue of the attacks, saying they were acts of international terrorism.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the TurkStream gas pipeline would not replace the Nord Streams because they have different capacities.

Peskov stated that additional conversations will be held to iron out the specifics of setting up a gas hub in Turkey with possible customers in Southern Europe.

Read next: Nord Stream accidents act of international terrorism

Investigators from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) later started a criminal investigation into the blasts as an act of international terrorism. It is currently impossible to figure out how long it will take to restore the pipelines to operational capacity.

"There is no doubt that this is an act of international terrorism, the purpose of which is to undermine the energy security of the entire continent," Putin told the Russian Energy Week in Moscow on Wednesday.

Putin previously accused the West of being behind the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines. He said it had already "practically begun to destroy shared European energy infrastructure," stressing that "it is obvious to all who is profiting from this."

He also told the Russian Energy Week that some participants in the energy market are trying to undermine the infrastructure of competitors.

Competitors are "forcing" Europeans to buy energy for higher prices when talking about accidents at the Nord Stream network, Putin explained.