Russia's defense ministry said on Saturday that people from the British navy blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month. London said this was not true and meant to take attention away from Russia's military failures in Ukraine.

Russia did not provide evidence for its claim that a leading NATO member had sabotaged important Russian infrastructure during the worst crisis in relations between the West and Russia since the Cold War.

The Russian ministry said that "British specialists" from the same unit told Ukrainian drones to attack ships of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea earlier on Saturday. It said that Russian forces mostly stopped the attacks, but that one Russian minesweeper was slightly damaged.

"According to the information we have, members of this British Navy unit were involved in planning, preparing, and carrying out a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 of this year, which involved blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines," the ministry said.

Britain said that it wasn't true.

"To take attention away from how badly they handled the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense is making false claims on an epic scale," the British Ministry of Defense said.

"This made-up story says more about disagreements inside the Russian government than it does about the West."

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman named Maria Zakharova said on social media that Moscow will ask the U.N. Security Council for a response to "a series of terrorist attacks against the Russian Federation in the Black and Baltic Seas, including Britain's involvement in them."

Since it invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russia has been cut off from the rest of the world. In the past, Russia has blamed the West for the explosions that broke the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

But it hadn't said before who it thought was behind the damage to the pipelines, which used to be the main way for Russian gas to get to Europe.

On September 26, seismologists recorded explosions and a sharp drop in pressure in both pipelines. This led to a lot of talk about the sabotage of one of Russia's most important energy corridors.

Reuters hasn't been able to check any of the different claims about who caused the damage right away.

Pipeline Mystery

Sweden and Denmark both think that explosions caused the four leaks on Nord Streams 1 and 2, but they haven't said who might be to blame. Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has said that the damage was caused on purpose.

The prosecutor in charge of the case said in a statement on Friday that Sweden has asked for more investigations into the damage done to the pipelines.

The Kremlin has said that claims that Russia caused the damage are "stupid" many times, and Russian officials have said that Washington has a motive because it wants to sell more liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe.

The US has said it has nothing to do with it.

Together, the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines can carry 110 billion cubic meters of gas per year. This is more than half of Russia's normal gas exports.

Parts of the 760-mile-long (1,224-km) pipelines that run from Russia to Germany are buried between 80 and 110 meters deep.

Black Sea Fleet

Russia said that Ukrainian forces attacked ships from the Black Sea Fleet early on Saturday in Sevastopol, the largest city in the part of Crimea that Russia took over.

The defense ministry said that nine unmanned aerial vehicles and seven unmanned marine drones were used in the attack.

"British experts in the town of Ochakiv oversaw the planning of this terrorist act and the training of service members of the Ukrainian 73rd Special Center for Naval Operations."

The ministry said that all of the air drones were destroyed, but the minesweeper Ivan Golubets had only minor damage. Sevastopol is where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.