Russia exposed plot to blow up Black Sea gas pipelines – Putin
Russia is aware of plans to attack trans-Black Sea gas pipelines, the TurkStream, and the Blue Stream, President Vladimir Putin has said. The plot is aimed at jeopardizing the peace process to end the Ukraine conflict, according to the president.
Putin made the remarks on Tuesday at a meeting of the Federal Security Service (FSB) board, adding that intelligence on plans to attack “our gas systems under the Black Sea,” was obtained.
“They simply cannot calm down. They don’t know what else to do to derail the [Ukraine] peace process and the attempt to reach a settlement through diplomatic means. They are doing everything to stage some kind of provocation and break everything that has been so carefully achieved on this negotiation track,” he said. Putin did not attribute the alleged plot to any party, saying it would be discussed during the closed-door part of the FSB board meeting.
Gas and oil infrastructure in the Black Sea has repeatedly come under Ukrainian attacks amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The attacks involved long-range UAV strikes against various facilities ashore, as well as repeated attempts to target Russian naval vessels patrolling the pipelines with sea drones.
Last October, FSB chief Aleksandr Bortnikov warned that Ukraine and the UK were jointly preparing an attack on TurkStream. London and Kiev have also been plotting attacks on other critical infrastructure sites in Russia, using sea and aerial drones, as well as saboteur divers, Bortnikov said at the time.
The September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea is the largest-scale attack on underwater energy infrastructure in modern history. While the theory that it was carried out by a group of Ukrainian divers has become mainstream in the West, Moscow has been skeptical about that version, suggesting instead that Western state actors may have had a hand in the sabotage.
