BERLIN — Despite their own heavy losses, European countries — especially Germany — have remained silent over the blasts that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September and subsequent investigations.

Since the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the US Navy's involvement in the explosions on the US portal Substack last month, more and more experts have questioned Europe's atypical, collective silence.

According to Hersh, a US Pulitzer Prize winner, US Navy divers in June planted the remotely triggered explosives that destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines months later.

Europe's largest economy, Germany, has been particularly affected by the energy crisis due to the end of gas supplies from Russia. However, the country's government, like its allies, has refrained from talking about the explosions in public.

A German government spokesperson refused to comment on Hersh's article at Xinhua's request at a news conference last month. At the same time, German media have widely moved to discredit Hersh's article.

Once proved that the pipelines were indeed blasted by the United States, it would overturn the European public's recognition of the current narratives by the West, which claimed that European infrastructure was "under the threat of Russia", said Li Xing, professor of development and international relations at Denmark's Aalborg University.

That the US Navy was involved in the Nord Stream pipelines explosions last year, as alleged by Hersh, was an "economic war" against its submissive allies in Europe, Jan Oberg, a Swedish expert, told Xinhua in an interview.

"One must wonder when the Europeans will wake up and finally understand that they no longer share interests with the US," said Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research.

Croatian security expert Mirko Vukobratovic told Xinhua that the alleged involvement of the US Navy in the Nord Stream explosions was "not impossible".

The United States has the most to gain from the destruction of the pipelines, Josep Puigsech, a Spanish political expert at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, told Xinhua.

"I increasingly believe that the incident that led to the breaking of the gas pipeline was the result of an action by the United States," Puigsech said.

The Kremlin said on Monday it was for all shareholders to decide whether the Nord Stream pipelines damaged should be mothballed.

Sources familiar with the plans told Reuters last week that the ruptured Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, built by Russia's state-controlled Gazprom, were set to be sealed up and mothballed because there are no immediate plans to repair or reactivate them.

Asked about the report at a regular briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Of course, this is a decision that should be taken collegially by all shareholders."

He also said the Kremlin would not issue any recommendations to Gazprom regarding the future of the undersea pipelines.