The US government would have sued investigative reporter Seymour Hersh for slander if it had nothing to do with the sabotage at the Nord Stream pipelines, Russian Environmental Protection Representative Sergey Ivanov told TASS.
“The investigation by Hersh, a famous journalist, which is being widely published, is being commented on. … I know the Western mentality and Western rules pretty well. Had the Americans not been involved, they would have sued Hersh for a libel a long time ago and claimed financial damages worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Defamation cases are usually like that in America,” Ivanov said. “But they aren’t. This means they understand they won’t win”.
The US and its allies’ attitude shows the West can’t be trusted, Ivanov said. “They’re just acting like nothing happened, that there were no explosions, and they and the Norwegians have nothing to do with it. This just goes to show you can trust neither words nor even written obligations from the West,” Ivanov said.