Russia says it will press U.N. Security Council over pipeline blast investigation

Russia intends to press the United Nations Security Council again for an international investigation into explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

Unexplained explosions ruptured both Nord Stream 1 and the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carrying gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Russia has repeatedly said the West was behind the blasts. The West and Ukraine have denied involvement.

"We will now bring the U.N. Security Council back to an examination of this issue," Zakharova told a regular news briefing.

She said the three Western permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain and France - had previously blocked Russia's efforts to secure a "transparent" investigation of what happened to the pipelines.

Russia and China are also permanent members of the U.N. body.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was studying all available information about the attacks.

In recent months, U.S. newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have reported that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency knew of a Ukrainian plot to attack the pipelines.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has denied Ukraine attacked them.

Some U.S. and European officials initially suggested Moscow had blown up its own pipelines, an interpretation dismissed as idiotic by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, said on Wednesday there was no reason for Moscow not to destroy its enemies' undersea communication cables given what he said was Western complicity in the pipeline blasts.