Department Press Briefing - September 28, 2022

QUESTION: All right. And then lastly, and your colleague at the White House just went - spoke about this in depth, so I just want to ask you about it - the Nord Stream explosion/leaks. We saw last night that the Secretary had a conversation with the Danish foreign minister about this. Has he had any additional conversations specifically related to these incidents? And if he has or even if he hasn't, has there been any change in your assessment of what happened?

MR PRICE: So you're right. The Secretary last night did have an opportunity to speak to his Danish counterpart, Foreign Minister Kofod. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, had an opportunity last night to speak to his Danish counterpart as well. The Secretary, I would expect within the coming day, potentially as soon as later today, will have an opportunity to speak to other European partners regarding what seem to be apparent acts of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipeline.

We have seen the statements from our Danish partners and from others. We are supporting European efforts to investigate this, and we're also - we also stand ready to support European efforts to mitigate any potential environmental impact. As you know, the energy impact of this apparent sabotage is and was mitigated by the fact that neither Nord Stream 2, which of course was never operational, and Nord Stream 1, because the Russians had already weaponized Nord Stream 1 by essentially turning it off - neither of these pipelines were pumping gas into Europe at the time. And so, of course, the impacts on Europe's broader energy security and energy resilience will therefore be mitigated.

Quite obvious the simplistic rhetoric by Ned Price to refer answers to NATO allies ... our hands are clean, it's not our war, we're just a interested bystander. He made a few exceptions, totally caught off guard. 😊

'Sapere aude'