The leaders of Serbia and Hungary announced on Sunday that explosives had been found in Serbia near a pipeline carrying Russian gas to Hungary.
“Our units received a blast of destructive power,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in a post on Instagram.
“Two large packages of explosives with detonators” were found in Kanjiža, in the north of Serbia, “a few hundred meters away” from the Balkan Stream gas pipeline, he said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called a meeting of his country’s Defense Council to discuss the situation.
“According to the information we have […] “An act of sabotage was prepared,” Orbán said after the meeting.
The two leaders did not immediately provide further details or photos of the findings.
Ukraine rejects any ties
Balkan Stream is a pipeline that runs through Bulgaria and Serbia, connecting Hungary to a Russian gas pipe under the Black Sea to Turkey.
“Ukraine has been trying to isolate Europe from Russian energy for years,” Orbán said, but he stopped short of placing blame directly on Ukraine or any other actor.
Ukraine has denied any connection with the alleged sabotage.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tikhayi said, “We categorically reject attempts to falsely link Ukraine to the incident of explosives found near the TurkStream pipeline in Serbia.”
“Ukraine has nothing to do with this. Presumably, this is a Russian false-flag operation as part of Moscow’s massive interference in the Hungarian elections.”
Both Serbia and Hungary depend on imported Russian gas.
In recent weeks, Orban accused Ukraine of deliberately delaying repairs to a separate damaged pipeline through Ukraine, blocking the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia.
Hungarian opposition raised questions on timing
The announcement comes a week before a hotly contested election in Hungary that could see nationalist Orban lose power after 16 years.
Leading opposition candidate Peter Magyar reacted to the news by accusing Orbán of attempting to spread panic ahead of the vote.
“Many people have publicly hinted that something ‘accidentally’ would happen to the gas pipeline to Serbia on Easter, a week before the Hungarian elections,” Magyar said in a video posted on Facebook. “And the same happened.”
Edited by: Shawn Sinico