Kremlin Comments on NATO Oil Pipeline Leak Amid Russian 'Sabotage' Claims

Russia has responded to NATO member Finland's claims that damage to an undersea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting the Nordic country and Estonia appears to have been caused by "external activity."

The news of damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline is disturbing, the Kremlin said.

On Tuesday, Finland's President Sauli Niinistö said the damage was due to "external activity" but that the precise cause is not yet known.

Finnish authorities said the telecoms cable breach took place in Estonian waters, while the damage to the gas pipeline was believed to have happened in Finnish waters.

Although the authorities didn't directly point a finger at Russia, local media cited intelligence sources as saying sabotage by Moscow was suspected.

Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a security and defense expert, told The Telegraph that "it seems that the Finnish defense forces and senior figures in the government strongly suspect it was Russia."

Finland joined the NATO military alliance this year in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a move that angered Moscow, which has sought to prevent NATO's expansion. Estonia has been a NATO member since 2004.

"Who would have an interest in sabotaging the pipeline? There are not a lot of countries that have the capabilities and motivation to do this. There's basically just one," Salonius-Pasternak said.

"I do not have technical information, I do not know if our special services have such information, but of course, this is quite disturbing news," Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.

Estonia Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told reporters on Tuesday that photos obtained by Estonian authorities confirmed that the damage is "mechanical" and "human-made." Pevkur said seismologists had ruled out an explosion.

"This damage must have been caused by some force that was not created by...a diver or a small underwater robot; the damage is more massive," Pevkur said.

An Estonian diplomatic official, who spoke with Newsweek on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly, said of the incident and alleged foreign involvement: "At this moment so little is known that any claim would quite certainly be a wrong one."

The diplomat added it is possible that investigators will never learn the full truth.

Peskov said the Kremlin is awaiting more detailed information but added that there had been "dangerous precedents for carrying out terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure in the Baltic." He said he was referring to blasts on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022.

Newsweek reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for additional comment.

It's still unclear who was behind the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea last September.

A Swedish investigation found evidence of detonations, pointing to sabotage. U.S. President Joe Biden called the leaks a "deliberate act of sabotage" at the time, though he did not directly accuse Moscow of being responsible.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the U.S. of being involved in the Nord Stream blasts in February.

A State Department spokesman told Newsweek at the time that Lavrov's allegations were "preposterous" and were "just another desperate attempt to deflect from Russia's brutal war against Ukraine with blatant disinformation and lies."

"We can say categorically that the United States was not involved in any way and we continue to work with Allies and partners to get to the bottom of what happened," the spokesman said.

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Update 10/11/23, 10:31 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from an Estonian diplomatic official.