Putin ally compares Nord Stream sabotage to CIA-backed attacks of 1980s

FILE PHOTO: Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev leaves after a meeting of President Vladimir Putin with U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, October 23, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

One of President Vladimir Putin's top allies said on Wednesday that the sabotage of the Nord Stream offshore gas pipelines resembled the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-backed attacks on oil infrastructure in Nicaragua in 1983.

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany on the bed of the Baltic Sea, were ruptured last month in what Moscow said was an act of "international terrorism".