The British Navy stands accused by the Russian government, without evidence, of blowing up the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, a claim the U.K. rejected as “false.”
“According to available information, representatives … of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year — blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday, according to media reports.
The accusation did not include any further information or evidence to support claims of state sabotage. The Russian government also said that U.K. operatives helped plan a drone attack on its fleet at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Saturday.
The U.K. Defense Ministry quickly denied Moscow’s claim.
“To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” the British ministry said in a tweet. “This invented story says more about arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West.”
Russia had already blamed the West in general terms for undersea explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipes last month. Those blasts have likely rendered the energy infrastructure unusable, according to the German government.
An investigation by Danish and Swedish authorities is ongoing into the explosions, which took place inside the two countries’ exclusive economic zones close to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.
Russia had already stopped gas transit through the pipeline sparking concerns earlier this year that it would use gas supply to blackmail Europe as its brutal war on Ukraine continues.
While the first phase of Nord Stream had been operating for nearly 11 years, the second phase of the project — dubbed Nord Stream 2 — had not yet been brought into commercial operation.
