"I find it very unfortunate that this entire discussion has come to focus on who blew [the pipelines] up, rather than who built them," Heorhii Tykhyi told the BBC, forcefully.

He argued that Nord Stream had "untied Russia's hands" to go to war, because it no longer needed to transit Ukraine for its gas to reach Europe.

"Did we warn about this? We did," Tykhyi wanted to know. "Did anyone listen to us? No, no-one did."