One of President Vladimir Putin’s top allies said on Monday he doubted that the Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up by a pro-Ukraine group and said Moscow still did not know who was behind the attacks, Interfax reported, citing Reuters.

The Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Mykola Patrushev said that Ukraine did not gain anything from the destruction of the pipelines.

German and American media have reported that American intelligence believes a pro-Ukrainian group is behind the September explosions, which severely damaged pipelines.

Russia qualified the incident as a terrorist attack and assumed that Western countries were behind it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov confirmed Moscow’s position on the need for an international investigation into the explosions, saying that “this is an extremely dangerous precedent: the commission of a terrorist attack against a critical international energy infrastructure.”

The New York Times claimed that a pro-Ukrainian group may be behind the explosions that disabled pipelines built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

The New York Times, however, noted that there is no evidence that the attack was linked to the Ukrainian government or other structures of the Ukrainian state.

A separate report by German public broadcaster ARD and newspaper Zeit said German authorities had identified the ship used in the sabotage mission.

According to sources, a group of 5 men and a woman rented a yacht from a company in Poland owned by citizens of Ukraine.

Following the reports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Friday denied any connection between his country and the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline last September.

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