After Russia’s President Putin and Turkiye’s President Erdogan met today and announced their pursuit of a massive Turkish hub for the distribution of Russian natural gas, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that the TurkStream, the Russian-Turkish pipeline that goes into Bulgaria, had been targeted by terrorists, but that the plot had been foiled. He said: “Certain forces … have already made an attempt on TurkStream. The saboteurs have been caught, and several people have been arrested. They wanted to blow it up. On our territory, on soil.” He didn’t specify further today, but it is likely that Peskov was referring to a mid-September report by Russia’s FSB that they had captured a Ukrainian agent along with his accomplices, that were involved in a plot to bomb a Russian facility involved in sending natural gas to Turkiye.
Peskov was speaking to reporters at the CICA summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, where both Putin and Erdogan had their bilateral side meeting, and announced future plans for a major Russian gas hub in Turkiye. Peskov explained that TurkStream was the only “fully functional, fully loaded and ‘working as clockwork’ route” for Russian gas to EU countries. He added that Putin, earlier, had “hinted about the origins of certain forces” that were behind an attack on TurkStream. Peskov also did not amplify that comment, but on Oct. 10, Putin had accused Kiev of a number of sabotage plots aimed at Russian energy infrastructure, including the TurkStream pipeline.
