Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that it was "clear" the U.S. ordered the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
German prosecutors last week issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man over the explosions on the pipelines, which transported Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a Ukrainian crew carried out the attacks with approval from Kyiv's then-military commander-in-chief.
During a visit to Azerbaijan on Monday, Lavrov reiterated Moscow's long-held claim of Western involvement.
"It is clear that to carry out such a terrorist attack, there was a command from the very top, as they say. For the West, the very top is, of course, Washington," Lavrov told Izvestia in a video interview published on its Telegram channel.
Lavrov criticized efforts to blame the incident on a group of drunken officers, calling it "not serious."
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Ukraine's top military commander at the time, Valery Zaluzhny, oversaw the plan to destroy the pipelines.
The paper said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially approved the plan but sought to abort it after the CIA warned him they were aware of the plans.
