A section of the pipeline was now filled with water across a significant distance, TASS paraphrased Miller as saying, in a series of bullet points on the agency's Telegram channel.

Separately, Prime news agency paraphrased Miller as saying the affected length covered hundreds of kilometres on the Russian side of the pipeline.

On Wednesday, Miller, head of the Russian state-controlled natural gas monopoly, said repairs to the damaged Nord Stream pipelines would take at least a year.

(Writing by Elaine Monaghan; Editing by David Gregorio)