Russia slams Denmark over Nord Stream ‘fraud’

Denying Russia access to the investigation of sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines makes a mockery of those probes, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

“This is such a fraud, a total scam, not even a con but a threepenny game, which in my opinion no one has been buying for a very long time,” Zakharova said in an interview with Rossiya-1.

“They are playing this for themselves, but the story with Nord Stream will not end the same way as many other stories they have buried or covered up, I think, for the simple reason that there’s a lot of money at stake,” Zakharova added.

Earlier in the day, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said that Moscow won’t be permitted to participate, telling reporters that “Denmark, Sweden and Germany all have rule of law and one can have confidence in our investigations.”

Russia has accused the three countries of lying about keeping Moscow informed of their probes, providing documents to that effect to the UN Security Council on Tuesday. The Russian mission has asked the UN for an impartial international investigation.

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were built under the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany and on to Western Europe. Both pipelines were severely damaged in a series of explosions in September 2022, near the Danish island of Bornholm. No one has taken responsibility for the bombing. 

In early February, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an account of what happened and blamed the US for planning and executing the bombing with the help of Norway. The US government denounced his account as “total fiction.” 

Earlier this month, the New York Times quoted unnamed US intelligence officials to claim a rogue “pro-Ukrainian group” may have been behind the attack, and that it was not ordered by the Ukrainian government or involve any US or British nationals. Hersh has laughed off the story as implausible.