Moscow will not make a choice until the results of the investigation into what happened are known.
A source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told RIA that Russia has not ruled out making a claim for compensation once the investigation into the explosions in the Nord Stream gas pipeline is over.
We asked Dmitry Birichevsky, who runs the ministry’s economic cooperation department, if Moscow was going to sue over the destruction of the pipelines. He said that the investigation was “not over yet” because they were “still waiting for its results to be submitted to the [United Nations] Security Council.”
It was “after that, we will see,” he said.
This is something Birichevsky has brought up before. In March, he said that Russia had not ruled out “the possibility of later raising the issue of compensatory damages over the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.”
The official, on the other hand, hasn’t said who Russia might ask for this payment or how much or what form it should be paid in.
Explosions under the water off the Danish Island of Bornholm in September 2022 destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipes, which were built to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany. So far, investigations have not been able to determine for sure who did the mischief. Various people have blamed the US, while others have claimed that Kiev planned the attack.
On the first of this month, the Washington Post said that Roman Chernivsky, a Ukrainian military leader, was a key figure in the destruction of the pipelines. The news source said that he was in charge of six Ukrainian soldiers who used a rented yacht to carry out the attack.
Chernivsky, on the other hand, has rejected the claims and called any ideas that he was involved in the attack “Russian propaganda.”
The “yacht” story is a “red herring” that US intelligence services set up, according to American investigative writer Seymour Hersh, who has said as much numerous times. He says that the CIA sabotaged the pipelines on orders from US President Joe Biden.
In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he “fully agrees” with Hersh’s conclusions. He said that the attack was best for the US because it was a rival to Europe as a gas provider.
