#Opinion by Maria Zakharova

💬 On September 30, Washington hosted a news conference by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.

Blinken admitted openly, without any embarrassment, that the United States and its NATO partners had motives to destroy Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.

Quote 1: “Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were not pumping gas into Europe at this time. Nord Stream 2 never became operational, as is well known. Nord Stream 1 has been shut down for weeks because of Russia’s weaponization of energy.”

Russia has never weaponised energy. Russia and the USSR before it just supplied gas to Europe. Without any interruptions. For 50 years. Washington’s lies simply confirm its criminal manipulation of this issue.

Quote 2: “And so we’ve significantly increased our production as well as making available to Europe liquefied natural gas. And we’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe to help compensate for any gas or oil that it’s losing as a result of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.”

And here is the motive. But Ukraine has nothing to do with it. If we remember it at all in the context of US energy interests, we must mention the fact that under pressure from US officials, Ukrainian politicians endlessly dictated gas transit terms to Russia that verged on blackmail.

Quote 3: “And ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s 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. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come...”

And that’s that.