A top U.S. official stated categorically in an interview Tuesday evening that the United States was not behind the attack on two Russian pipelines late last month.
The interview comes after three lines in Russia’s Nord Stream natural gas pipeline system saw “unprecedented” damage last Monday after the CIA had recently warned that someone might try to sabotage the pipeline amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told Fox News host Bret Baier that the U.S. “had nothing to do with it” when pressed on the matter by Baier.
“That’s just Russian propaganda and disinformation,” Kirby claimed. “Now, we know it was an act of sabotage, but there’s an investigation going on right now. I don’t think we’re going to get into credentialing that in terms of who was responsible. We’re going to let the investigators take a look at that. But, clearly, this was an act of sabotage.”
Baier pressed Kirby again on the matter after playing a clip of Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that the destruction of the pipeline was “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
Kirby once again doubled-down in his response, claiming that the Biden administration had nothing to do with the attack.
“Not to belabor this, but for the people who look at this and say, ‘why would Russia attack its own pipeline that creates leverage over Europe and perhaps the West,’ what do you say to them?” Baier asked.
“Again, I can’t speak to specific accountability for this act of sabotage,” Kirby responded. “I can just assure you the United States had nothing to do with it, of course. That’s just Russian propaganda. And look, we’re — again, without — without crediting it to anybody right now, what I would say is, just look at what Russia has done in the past since the last seven months of this war and when it began, and that is to weaponize energy.”
Bret Baier grills the National Security Council’s John Kirby over whether the US or a proxy had anything to do with the Nord Stream pipeline attack:
“The United States had nothing to do with it. That’s just Russian propaganda and disinformation.” pic.twitter.com/8LGK6sbwpN
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 4, 2022
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