Britain on Saturday denied Russian claims that British navy personnel blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, calling them “false claims of an epic scale”.
“To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said in London.
“This latest invented story, says more about the arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West.”
In the statement it issued earlier on Saturday, Russia’s defence ministry did not give evidence for its claim of British involvement.
“According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on Sept 26 this year — blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines,” the statement said.
Moscow had previously blamed the West for the explosions last month that ruptured the Russian-built Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines on the bed of the Baltic Sea.
But it has never before given specific details of who was responsible for the damage to the pipelines, previously the largest routes for Russian gas supplies to Europe.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that allegations of Russian responsibility for the damage were “stupid”. Russian officials have said Washington had a motive for wanting to damage the Nord Stream pipelines as it wants to sell more liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe.
The United States has denied involvement.
In a related development, authorities in Russian-annexed Crimea said that a drone attack on the peninsula’s Sevastopol port earlier on Saturday had been successfully “repelled” with all drones “shot down”.
“No facilities in the city have been hit. The situation is under control,” Sevastopol governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said on Telegram.
Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Sevastopol is the home port of Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet.
City authorities later said that the harbour was “temporarily” closed to boats and ferries.
The latest development came as Ukrainian forces press a counter-offensive to retake land in the Russian-occupied south of Ukraine.
A drone hovers in the distance as Ukrainian service members use a demining machine, capable of clearing 2,400 square metres per hour, to clear a minefield in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine on Thursday. (Reuters Photo)