Russia again presses UN Security Council on Nord Stream blast inquiry

Russia again told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday it wants an international investigation into explosions last September on the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany that spewed gas into the Baltic Sea.

Russia has said the West was behind the blasts. Western governments have denied involvement as has Ukraine, which is fighting Russian forces that invaded in February 2022.

Russia failed in March to get the U.N. Security Council to ask for an independent inquiry. Only Russia, China and Brazil voted in favour of the Russian-drafted text, while the remaining 12 council members abstained.

“We will seek international investigation and punishment of those who are behind this crime,” Russia’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters after raising the issue behind closed doors in the 15-member council on Thursday.

“We are now thinking about how we’re going to pursue this course. Nothing is excluded in this regard,” said Polyanskiy, adding Russia could continue raising the issue in the Council to make clear it is “not satisfied.”

The pipeline blasts occurred in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. Sweden, Denmark and Germany have said that their own separate investigations were still active and Russia had been informed.

Polyanskiy said those inquiries were “just moving around in circles” and the situation was “absolutely intolerable.”

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was studying all available information about the attacks.

In recent months, U.S. newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines on one of Russia’s most important energy corridors.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denied Ukraine attacked them.

Some U.S. and European officials initially suggested Moscow had blown up its own pipelines, an interpretation dismissed as idiotic by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, said on Wednesday there was no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies’ undersea communication cables given what he said was Western complicity in the pipeline blasts.