MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th September, 2022) US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that the United States will not speculate on who is responsible for accidents at the Nord Stream pipelines until an investigation is complete.
"In terms of the attack or the damage to the pipeline, at this point, I think there is a lot of speculation but quite frankly until a complete investigation is done, no one will be able to really determine what happened for certain," Austin told a joint press conference with Philippine Defense Secretary Jose Faustino in Hawaii.
Austin noted that he discussed the issue with his Danish counterparts on Wednesday, adding that "it will be several days before they will able to get the right team and look at the sites and really try to determine what happened."
"Until we get further information or able to do further analysis, we won't speculate on who may have been responsible," Austin said.
On Monday, the Nord Stream AG pipeline operator told Sputnik that a dispatcher had registered a rapid gas pressure drop on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The incident occurred in Danish waters near the island of Bornholm. Later that day, the operator said that a pressure drop had been registered on both strings of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The Swedish and Danish authorities said they had detected undersea explosions, with the consensus being that the incident was a result of sabotage. The incidents are being investigated by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, as well as the authorities of Sweden and Denmark.
