(Reuters) – Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that no decision had been made yet on whether to go ahead with a repair of the undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines that were damaged by explosions in September.
He was commenting on Canada’s plans to revoke a sanctions waiver that allowed turbines for Nord Stream 1, Russia’s biggest gas pipeline to Europe, to be repaired in Montreal and returned to Germany.
“Only repairs can affect Nord Stream now. Or launching the only surviving line of Nord Stream 2,” Peskov told reporters. “The repair has yet to come to fruition. No decisions were made in this regard.”
He said Russia was not aware of the results of investigations into the pipeline blasts by Sweden and Denmark. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed the explosions on Western sabotage.
“We do not know anything about the results of the investigation yet. We do not know to what extent the countries in whose economic zone this sabotage took place will still insist on getting to the bottom of the truth,” Peskov said.
Peskov added there was no decision on whether to start gas exports via the intact part of the Nord Stream 2 line.
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to carry Russian gas to Germany, was completed in September 2021, but was never put into operation after Berlin shelved certification just days before Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in February.
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Jon Boyle)
