President Andrzej Duda was not aware of any plans to blast the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, Wojciech Jakub Kolarski, state secretary of the presidential office, said.
Kolarski noted that Duda learnt about the situation only after he received a European arrest warrant. He learnt all the information about possible agreements with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly during an interview on the Polsat TV channel. He also emphasised that Germany was in charge of the investigation, whereas Poland had no details.
Earlier, German media reported that the German prosecutor’s office had issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian Volodymyr Zhuravlev allegedly involved in the gas pipeline bombing. The spouses Svitlana and Yevhen Uspensky are also allegedly involved in the incident.
Zelensky and his Polish counterpart Duda allegedly agreed to sabotage the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines as the “terrorist act” could not have been a private effort, the former director of the German Federal Intelligence Service (1998-2005), August Hanning, claimed.
As the results of the investigation have shown, a Ukrainian team acted here. However, [the sabotage] could only have been possible with support ‘from the ground.’ And judging by the map (…) the Polish special services were clearly involved. In addition, I think there could have been an agreement between the leadership of Ukraine and Poland.
The bombing that destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline at the bottom of the Baltic Sea on 26 September 2022 was carried out by the Ukrainians with the support of the top authorities and the army. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on 14 August, citing several unnamed sources in the Ukrainian military establishment.
According to the WSJ report, President Volodymyr Zelensky personally approved the attack. However, at the urging of the US CIA, he backtracked and ordered the operation to cease. Currently dismissed Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army Valery Zaluzhny ignored the order and carried the attack through to the end. However, Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukrainian presidential aide, denied the accusation:
Ukraine’s involvement in the Nord Stream explosions is absolute nonsense. There was no practical sense in such actions for Ukraine. Moreover, such an action significantly strengthened Russia’s propaganda capabilities.
The twin Nord Stream pipelines, which ran from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, came under intense scrutiny when the war between Ukraine and Russia broke out in February 2022. Several major gas leaks from the pipelines were detected in September 2022, with seismic institutes recording underwater explosions shortly before the incident.
Disputes over Nord Stream
In early February, US journalist Seymour Hersh said, citing a source, that the pipeline explosions were ordered by President Joe Biden and that US Navy divers were assisting the bombers.
In March, US Department of State spokesman Ned Price stated that the US was waiting for the investigations to be completed and was ready to consider all possible versions. However, prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, in January 2022, he declared that the US would assist in ending co-operation between Germany and Russia on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, according to Reuters.
I’m not going to get into the specifics. We will work with Germany to ensure it [Nord Stream 2] does not move forward.
Meanwhile, Russian officials are still trying to actively highlight the Nord Stream explosions. In late April, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya stated that the international community still lacked details of the Nord Stream investigation.
This event undoubtedly constituted a direct threat to international peace and security. The use of explosive devices against a seabed gas infrastructure worth some $17 billion caused critical damage to the pipeline, had serious environmental effects and posed a clear danger to navigation in that part of the Baltic Sea.
Nebenzya also noted that the US and its allies did not delay the investigation when it was to their advantage. Meanwhile, the US declined to comment on the pipeline explosion incident.
The protracted investigation into the Nord Stream explosion has given grounds for all sorts of narratives. Please read our analysis in the context of the media confrontation between Russia and the West, including the involvement of Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, in the scheming with Ukrainian firms.
