By Pavel Polityuk
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied his country’s involvement in explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and instead pointed the finger at Russia in comments to Reuters on Thursday.
“Such an act could only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources… and who owned all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” Podolyak said as part of his written commentary.
The multibillion-dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that transport gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of explosions in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Polish prosecutors said on Wednesday that Poland had received a European arrest warrant issued by Berlin in connection with the attack, but that the suspect, a Ukrainian man named Volodymyr Z, has already left Poland.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that top Ukrainian officials were involved in what happened.
“Ukraine has nothing to do with the Nord Stream explosions,” Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine did not gain any strategic or tactical advantage from the explosions.
Russia has already blamed the United States, Britain and Ukraine for the explosions, which largely cut off Russian gas from the lucrative European market. These countries have denied their involvement.
Germany, Denmark and Sweden all opened investigations into the incident, and the Swedes found traces of explosives on several objects recovered from the explosion site, confirming that the blasts were deliberate acts.
