News - Middle East: A US media report has revealed that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned allies in the EU about a potential attack by a pro-Ukrainian group on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Russia has rejected such reports, saying it is an attempt to divert attention from the real perpetrators and absolve the United States. 

Citing intelligence officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that around June and July of last year, the CIA informed Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and other European agencies that three Ukrainian nationals were attempting to acquire ships in states around the Baltic Sea, including Sweden, to target the pipelines.

A month after the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines in September last year, CIA Director William Burns and the White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were said to have been considering the possibility that Ukraine had orchestrated the sabotage of the pipelines built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

The report came amid a war of words between the US and Russia over the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines.

Moscow has said the United States should try to prove it was not behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that connected Russia to Western Europe.

Russia has said it considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines "an act of international terrorism" and will not allow it to be swept under the rug.