US investigating 'deliberate act of sabotage' on Nord Stream: Biden
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The United States says the Nord Stream incident was an act of sabotage, though it did not specify the perpetrator, saying it will probe the matter.
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US President Joe Biden
The United States sees that the explosions that struck and disabled parts of Russia's Nord Stream natural gas pipeline extending to Europe were deliberate acts of sabotage, US President Joe Biden said on Friday.
"You also asked me earlier about the pipeline, and let me say this: it was a deliberate act of sabotage, and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies," Biden said following remarks on Hurricane Ian.
"We will work with our allies to get to the bottom of exactly, precisely what happened … and at the appropriate moment when things calm down, we’re going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened," the US President added.
The Biden administration has so far denied involvement in the attacks on both the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had accused earlier today the United States of switching to sabotage from sanctions due to the failure of their sanctions regime.
"The Anglo-Saxons turned to sabotage by organizing explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines," Putin said, explicitly accusing the US and its allies of carrying out the attacks on Russia's Baltic Sea natural gas pipelines.
"By starting a sanctions blitzkrieg against the Russian Federation, the West believed that it could 'build' the whole world on its own command. But such a prospect excites only political masochists and fans of other non-traditional forms of international relations," Putin said.
The Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN) reported powerful underwater explosions in the area of gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline on Tuesday.
SNSN Director Bjorn Lund said as quoted by SVT that "there are no doubts that these were explosions."
Denmark's maritime traffic agency and Sweden's Maritime Authority reported on Monday a "dangerous" gas leak in the Baltic Sea close to the route of the inactive Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which experienced an unexplained drop in pressure.
The leak, southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm, "is dangerous for maritime traffic" and "navigation is prohibited within a five nautical mile radius of the reported position," the agency warned in a notice to ships.
It was revealed a few days ago that US military helicopters habitually and on numerous occasions circled for hours over the site of the Nord Stream pipelines incident near Bornholm Island earlier in September.
Flightradar24 data showed that earlier this month, a US Navy Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk helicopter spent hours loitering over the location of the damaged natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm for several days in a row, September 1, 2, and 3, in particular.
