Moscow, Russia - Russian leaders have seized on a report of alleged US involvement in the Nord Stream pipeline explosion, accusing President Joe Biden of terrorism.

"Biden is writing himself into history as a terrorist," Russian parliamentary leader Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel on Thursday.

He was reacting to a report by veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh, in which he claimed that US Navy divers were responsible for the gas pipeline explosions in the Baltic Sea. The White House vigorously denied the report.

The Russian leadership has itself been accused of being behind the explosions that severely damaged the pipelines leading from Russia to Germany at the end of September. Moscow, in turn, has argued from the beginning that the pipelines were sabotaged by the United States, who had aggressively and publically opposed both pipelines, but especially Nord Stream 2.

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Russia had already shut down Nord Stream 1 at the time of the explosions, because of alleged technical problems.

Investigations determined that the detonations were caused by sabotage, though there is no clear proof of who was responsible.

Now Hersh has put forward the theory in his blog that divers from the US special forces attached the explosive devices to the pipelines in the Baltic Sea during a NATO exercise in June, and later – supported by Norway – had them remotely detonated.

The 85-year-old Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner who became world-famous when he exposed the My Lai massacre by US troops in Vietnam and contributed to uncovering the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq, has been recently challenged for controversial reports on the Syrian chemical attack of 2013.

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His sources on Nord Stream are unverified, and both the US and Norway have sharply denied the report.

"It is completely false and a complete fabrication," said US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.