The Biden administration is not interested in a probe into explosions at the Nord Stream gas network, Vladimir Vasilyev, a chief research fellow of the Moscow-based US and Canada Institute think tank, told Sputnik. He, however, believes this could happen only in case a new POTUS [President of the United States] shows interest in such a probe.
Vasilyev recalled that the White House earlier rejected US journalist Seymour Hersh’s accusations related to Washington’s involvement in the explosions as a "fabrication from the beginning to the end."
"So the Biden administration will not deal with this issue any more, it has turned a deaf ear to the matter," Vasilyev said.
At the same time, the analyst did not rule out that the leaks Hersh relied on in his investigation could be sanctioned by the US administration to show that “it is useless to fool around with Washington” and to demonstrate how far America can go.
"From my point of view, Europe was shown its new energy reality […]. The US is really trying to leave the continent without cheap energy resources and thereby reduce the competitiveness of the European economy," Vasilyev pointed out.
According to him, it remains unclear whether Washington destroyed the evidence, documents and archives pertaining to the Nord Stream case or whether they are reliably classified, which means there is a chance they will be disclosed some day.
"Let's assume Donald Trump becomes the next US president. Is he interested in opening a probe into the Nord Stream blasts? He may well initiate it because his relations with [US President Joe] Biden look like warfare. Trump may well use it so as to order the probe," the analyst argued.
He dubbed the investigations by Germany, Denmark and Sweden as nothing but a fool’s errand because he said such probes should have been opened shortly after the explosions.
Under such conditions, Russia had to curtail work on the draft statement, Zakharova stressed, adding that Moscow will continue to attract the international community’s attention to the issue. She recalled that Germany, Denmark and Sweden have not presented even preliminary results of their probes and that they refuse to cooperate with those states that suffered damage as a result of the Nord Stream blasts.
Nord Stream Blasts
The Nord Stream pipelines, built to deliver gas from Russia to the EU under the Baltic Sea, were hit by explosions on September 26, 2022. The pipelines' operator, Nord Stream AG, described the damage as unprecedented, saying that it was impossible to estimate the timeframe for repairing the pipe network.
Denmark, Germany, and Sweden have left Russia out of their investigations, prompting Moscow to launch its own probe into what the Kremlin designated as international terrorism. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in this vein that "such a terrorist attack against critical energy infrastructure, which belongs to an international joint venture, was somehow organized by the United States, [and/or] the United Kingdom."
No official results of the investigations have yet been announced, with US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh publishing a report in February in which he argued that the explosions were organized by the US government with the support of Norwegian authorities. Washington has denied any involvement in the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, pointed out that the results of the investigation into the Nord Stream explosions are unlikely to see the light of day.