(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 one surviving line of Nord Stream 2,” Peskov told reporters. “The repair has yet to return to fruition. No decisions were made on this regard.”
He said Russia was not aware of the outcomes of investigations into the pipeline blasts by Sweden and Denmark. Moscow, without providing evidence, has blamed the explosions on Western sabotage.
“We have no idea anything in regards to the results of the investigation yet. We have no idea to what extent the countries in whose economic zone this sabotage took place will still insist on attending to the underside of the reality,” Peskov said.
Peskov added there was no decision on whether to start out gas exports via the intact a part of the Nord Stream 2 line.
Construction of Nord Stream 2, designed to hold Russian gas to Germany, was accomplished 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)
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