Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday that British navy personnel blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, a claim that London said was false and designed to distract from Russian military failures in Ukraine.

Russia did not give evidence for its claim that a leading NATO member had sabotaged critical Russian infrastructure amid the worst crisis in relations between the West and Russia since the depths of the Cold War. …

“To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” [the UK Defence Ministry] said.

“This invented story, says more about arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West.”

[The Russians’ desperation is taking on an epic scale these days. I wonder, though, why they didn’t blame the US. Maybe Putin wants to see if he can manipulate the political instability in the UK to his advantage? — Ed]