Kremlin says focus of Nord Stream probe is now on Germany

Kremlin says focus of Nord Stream probe is now on Germany

By Dmitry Antonov

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia will watch what Germany does to investigate explosions which tore through the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 after Sweden dropped its own investigation.

Separately, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russia will be transparent in its own probe into the explosions.

The blasts at the pipelines, which brought Russian natural gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, cut off energy revenues for the Kremlin.

Russia has variously blamed the U.S., Britain and Ukraine for the pipeline blasts. All those countries deny involvement.

Swedish prosecutors said on Wednesday they would drop their own investigation into the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines and hand evidence uncovered in their probe over to German investigators.

Sweden, Denmark and Germany launched separate investigations into the Nord Stream blasts, each tightly controlling information. The Danish and German probes are still ongoing.

"Of course, now we need to see how Germany itself reacts to this, as a country that has lost a lot in relation to this terrorist attack," the Kremlin's Peskov said.

"It will be interesting to see how thorough the German authorities will be when it comes to this investigation," he added.

Russia has repeatedly complained that the West has not shared information from its investigations.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's Zakharova said later on Wednesday that Moscow would not make a secret of the conclusions of its own probe into the Nord Stream explosions.

"Everyone will be happy to know what really happened there, because so much work and hopes for fruitful cooperation (with Europe) were put into it," she told a weekly briefing with reporters.