- Russian President said two craters had been found
According to TASS, Russia's state-owned news agency article published on November 1, 2022, Gazprom was allowed to examine the sites of the explosions at the Nord Stream pipelines and has seen the damage, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters on Monday.
"I received a report this morning fromMiller that they had done an examination. Gazprom was allowed to examine the sites of the explosions, by the way," the president said.
He said two craters had been found: One is three meters deep and the other five meters.
"A 40-meter length of the pipeline was ripped out. The rupture is, the pipes have come 259 meters apart, I think," he said," he said.
Putin added that the examination of the sites of the explosions left no doubt the explosions were a terrorist attack.
"It was an obvious terrorist attack, an obvious one," the president said when fielding questions from reporters.
"The piece of pipe that was ripped away, was twisted at 90-degree angle and thrown 40 meters aside, exactly towards Nord Stream 2, which was also damaged. Apparently, by this blast and the fragments of this pipe," Putin went on. "It’s hard for us to control this, because all this happened in the special economic zones of Denmark, Sweden and Germany."
Four leaks were discovered in late September on the Nord Stream gas link, with the most recent one pinpointed by Sweden’s coast guard. On September 27, operator Nord Stream AG reported that three lines of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage. The first leak was identified on Nord Stream 2 near the Danish Island of Bornholm. Then two leaks were recorded at Nord Stream. Swedish seismologists later reported that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on the previous day. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the incidents were sabotage.
