Washington suggests "a pro-Ukrainian group" destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines

Senior Joe Biden government officials released intelligence information on Tuesday according to which it was a pro-Ukrainian group that sabotaged and destroyed the Nord Stream I and II underwater pipelines last September.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
07 March 2023 Tuesday 09:24
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Washington suggests "a pro-Ukrainian group" destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines

Senior Joe Biden government officials released intelligence information on Tuesday according to which it was a pro-Ukrainian group that sabotaged and destroyed the Nord Stream I and II underwater pipelines last September. The confidentiality, without precise data on the group in question, was published by The New York Times.

Nord Stream 1 was a major supply channel for Russian oil to Europe via Germany, from coast to coast under the waters of the Baltic. It continued to function for a few months after the start of the war and until, days before the sabotage, Moscow turned off the tap in response to Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine. In the last full year of its operation, 2021, the pipeline transported 59,200 million cubic meters of gas: more than a third of the 155,000 million that the European Union imported to Russia in that year.

The Nord Stream II was to double the total flow of Russian hydrocarbons through the Baltic, to 110 billion cubic meters per year. But the new infrastructure did not come into operation because the German authorities did not give the necessary authorization. The project also had strong opposition from the United States. Biden vowed to stop it from opening or kill it off shortly before the war if Russia attacked Ukraine: "We'll kill it off," he said.

This statement, and above all information from an anonymous source, helped journalist Seymour Hersh, winner of a Pulizter Prize, to publish a controversial story last February, in which he attributed the sabotage to the United States.

Washington immediately denied the involvement of the US government in the explosions, located near the Danish island of Bornhol, and this Tuesday it did so again with the information regarding an undetermined pro-Ukrainian group.

The officials who informed the New York newspaper qualified that they "had no evidence that President Volodimir Zelensky or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting under the direction of any member of the Ukrainian government."

And this despite the fact that Ukraine and its allies would have "the most logical motivation to attack the pipelines" after having opposed their construction and activation for years as constituting "a threat to national security" insofar as it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe, bypassing Ukraine itself. "Ukrainian military intelligence and government officials say they had no role in the attack and do not know who carried it out," The New York Times added.

The newspaper's informants said "there was a lot they didn't know about the perpetrators" who were allegedly pro-Ukrainian. The "Intelligence review" on which the suspicion is based would suggest that they are "opponents of President Vladimir Putin of Russia", without specifying the identity of the members of the group, nor their address, nor their means of financing .