Russia exclusion from probe into Nord Stream attack 'double standards'

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The situation with Sweden denying Russia access to the ongoing investigation into the explosions that shook Gazprom's Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea highlights the West's double standards, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

On September 26, unprecedented damage to three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines was discovered. Two explosions were observed by Swedish seismologists along the pipelines.

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.

"And as for Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, they also do not seem to trust us. Because they do not want to let us in on the investigation, although Nord Stream 1 is 51% of our property and Nord Stream 2 is entirely the property of Gazprom," Lavrov told Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1.

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said late Monday that Stockholm had no plans to allow Russia to participate in the ongoing probe into the explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

"In Sweden, preliminary investigations are confidential, and this is certainly true in this case," Andersson said, according to AFP.

In light of the whole debacle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov underlined three days ago that the scenario surrounding Russia's Nord Stream pipelines is first and foremost beneficial to the United States, which is interested in forcing competitors off the European natural gas market.

Additionally, Russian President Vladimir Putin 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."

Sergei Kupriyanov, a spokesperson for the Russian energy giant Gazprom said earlier today that a NATO mine destroyer was discovered around the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline in November 2015.

Spokesperson Sergei Kupriyanov recalled how NATO claimed at the time that the device was lost during exercises conducted in the region. He also highlighted how the device was pulled out by the Swedish armed forces, who then defused it.

Previous reports said Flightradar24 data showed that US military helicopters habitually and on numerous occasions circled for hours over the site of the Nord Stream pipeline incident near Bornholm Island.