During a joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke openly and unashamedly about the US and NATO motives for destroying the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeperson Maria Zakharova wrote this in her Telegram channel on Monday.
"Blinken openly, unashamedly, said the United States and its NATO partners have motives for destroying the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the diplomat said.
Zakharova quoted from Blinken's speech. "Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were not pumping gas to Europe at the time. Nord Stream 2, as you know, was never put into operation. Nord Stream 1 was stopped for several weeks because of Russia's use of energy as a weapon <...>," she reports the secretary of state as saying.
Commenting on Blinken, Zakharova stressed that Russia has never used energy as a weapon. "Russia has never used energy as a weapon. Russia, and before it the USSR, simply supplied Europe with gas. Uninterruptedly. For 50 years. Washington's lies confirm only its criminal manipulation of this topic," Zakharova said.
Zakharova cited Blinken as her motivation for destroying the Nord Streams that the United States had increased its production and was now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe, "helping to make up for any European losses in oil and gas as a result of Russian aggression against Ukraine." Zakharova noted that "Ukraine has nothing to do with this," and reported that "under pressure from US officials, Kiev politicians constantly put conditions to the Russian side on the verge of blackmail for gas transit."
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Photo: Vladimir Gerdo/TASS
Based on materials from TASS