Moscow won't let West blow up pipelines

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Russia "will not let the West blow up gas pipelines again" and vowed that Moscow would no longer rely on the West as an energy partner.

He made the remarks at an event in India on Friday, a day after attending a meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

Moscow has said Western countries were responsible for the blasts that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines in September, an assertion they have dismissed, and has called for an international investigation.

Since then, speculation that the United States was behind the explosions has grown, culminating in a report by the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh last month alleging that the bombing was carried out on the orders of the White House.

In an interview on Friday, Hersh told China Global Television Network that the US is the only suspect in the sabotage of the pipelines.

US mainstream media have by and large remained silent on Hersh's claims. A week after his story was published the US online news portal Mint-Press said the 20 most influential news publications in the US, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, had essentially disregarded it. Four media outlets gave scant attention to it, such as a report of 100 words or so by Bloomberg.

China Daily - Reuters