China among those demanding probe into alleged US involvement in the undersea gas pipeline explosions
A gas leak is seen at the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on Sept 27 from a Danish F-16 jet off the Baltic island of Bornholm, south of Dueodde. (PHOTO / AFP)
Weeks into Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report on US involvement in last September’s Nord Stream blasts, Washington is still dismissing the disclosure, the majority of Europe remains secretive, and Western mainstream media outlets stay as yet blind to the revelations.
The chilling details brought to light in the report, however, have caused misgivings and grave concerns among the international community. Calling Hersh’s report something that should not be glossed over, more people around the world now demand an objective, fair and professional probe into the incident, and a speedup in truth-telling.
On Sept 26, 2022, a series of clandestine bombings and subsequent underwater gas leaks occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which carry gas from Russia to Europe. Soon afterwards, Washington and some European countries pointed an accusing finger at Russia.
But independent thinkers have reckoned the other way around. Days after the blasts, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, told Bloomberg in a TV show that the United States, rather than Russia, could be behind the attack, prompting the TV hosts to abruptly take him off the air.
Hersh’s account on Feb 8 adds weight to Sachs’ assertions. In a 5,200-word article published on the US portal Substack, Hersh revealed how the US partnered with Norway in a top-secret operation in June 2022 to plant remotely triggered explosives that took out three of the four Nord Stream pipelines three months later.
In response, Washington has denied the accusation on various occasions. Speaking to Fox News on Feb 19, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called Hersh’s report “a completely false story.”
However, not everyone bought Washington’s version. In an email interview with Xinhua, Sachs perceived Hersh’s report as “credible” and consistent with several existing facts.
Former US National Security Agency employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted last month that the US is wasting time and money to shoot down “unidentified flying objects” above US and Canadian soil to ensure that national security reporters get assigned to investigate balloon nonsense “rather than (US) budgets or bombings” of Nord Stream.
“The US had the motive, means, and opportunity and spent many months confessing to the plot and then to the crime after it took place,” noted the Black Agenda Report website, citing US President Joe Biden’s pledge in February 2022 to stop the Nord Stream 2 project and US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s remarks in January this year that Washington is “gratified” to know the Nord Stream 2 is now “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
There are “ample reasons” why the US would be involved in the Nord Stream blasts, Sevim Dagdelen, a parliamentarian of Germany’s The Left party, was quoted as saying by Canadian website Western Standard in a report published on Feb 13.
Former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl told Sputnik in an interview: “For me, one thing was clear ever since 2018 that the US was very much determined to make sure that this pipeline system would never ever become operative.”
The now-deleted “Thank you, USA” tweet posted by former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski offered fresh insight into how much some European officials are convinced of US culpability.
Collective silence
When the needle of suspicion points towards the US, European governments have fallen into collective silence.
Denmark, Germany and Sweden are investigating the destruction, but all remain tight-lipped over who blew holes in the pipelines.
Last week, the three countries told the UN Security Council in a joint letter that investigations are “ongoing”. Nothing was said about who is responsible. They only stated that “investigations have not yet been concluded” and “it is not possible to say when they will be concluded”.
Not even allowing access to members of the German Bundestag, all information on the matter has been classified as “highly confidential” because of the so-called third-party rule that prevents conflicts with the interests of allied states or their intelligence services.
“Even if the Germans, Swedes or Danes themselves found some evidence of US involvement in the explosions, they would hardly talk about them because they would not be able to take such responsibility,” said Igor Yushkov, a leading analyst of Russia’s National Energy Security Fund.
Besides, US corporate media have overwhelmingly brushed aside Hersh’s report. A study by independent watchdog website MintPress News analyzed the 20 most influential US publications, and found only four mentions of the report.
“What’s most strange in this case is that US mainstream media with political and social influence, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, have deliberately remained indifferent and silent when Hersh, a veteran journalist who has proved his credibility in his investigations in the past, published his latest investigation of the Nord Stream blasts,” wrote Singapore newspaper Lianhe Zaobao on Feb 11.
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern while addressing the UN Security Council recently, said: “When we see this kind of thing (the Nord Stream blasts) going on, we go to somebody who might be able to protect us and might be able to get the word out. Now, this was two weeks ago. Has The New York Times mentioned Seymour Hersh’s article? Or has it even reported the denials? No, not yet. This is (what) the Germans would say, merkwurdig (strange).”
Who benefits most?
A recent report by Indian news website Firstpost quoted Hersh as saying that the US saw energy alternatives for Europe as a “threat,” and that the Biden administration feared that Europe would “walk away” from the Ukraine crisis if it felt the need for Russian fuel carried by the pipeline, which was under sanctions.
“The fear of losing European support in the Ukraine conflict made the US to take out the only option Europe had should it want to restart buying fuel from Russia,” Hersh argued.
Just like Hersh, many others believing in US sabotage also noted its strategic and economic motives behind the scenes.
“The US did not like the close economic relations between Germany and Russia. They are doing something or they could try to do something that could break these relations,” Gunnar Beck, a member of the European Parliament, said in an interview with Russian newspaper Izvestia on Feb 12.
Washington was guided by strategic reasons to close Russia’s energy and economic ties with Germany and most countries in Western and Eastern Europe, Beck said.
From the political and economic perspective, the United States is the major beneficiary of the incident, former Advisor to the French Defense Ministry Alain Corvez told the China Global Television Network on Feb 14.
Italian journalist Gilberto Trombetta also said that Hersh’s report is credible because the only one who would certainly benefit from the blasts is the US.
Hersh’s disclosure is “not impossible” because the US has benefited the most from the incident as it can sell gas to Europe at a much higher price, in addition to exerting pressure on Russia, Croatian security expert Mirko Vukobratovic told Xinhua on Feb 21.
Meanwhile, calls for a thorough probe into the incident to restore truth have mounted across the world. For example, Sachs told the UN Security Council in a briefing on Feb 21 that an investigation by the Security Council into the explosions is a high global priority.
In one of her recent tweets, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary A. DiCarlo also stressed the importance of the “search for the truth” regarding the matter.
Noting the Nord Stream pipelines are major transboundary infrastructure and energy transportation arteries, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Feb 22 that China supports speeding up the investigation into the blasts to swiftly find out the truth.
Applauding China’s call, Vukobratovic said: “The Chinese position that the investigation must be objective and impartial is the only correct one. Only when it is carried out professionally can we talk about the intentions of those who caused the explosion.”
Timeline
December 2021
*US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force, mapping out a plan to destruct the two Nord Stream pipelines.
December 2021
*CIA Director William Burns authorized a working group to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger explosions along the pipelines.
January 2022
Victoria Nuland, US undersecretary for political affairs, said in Washington, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Feb 7, 2022
US President Joe Biden said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, “If Russia invades Ukraine, there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring end to it.”
Feb 24, 2022
The Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out.
March 2022
*Sullivan’s interagency group sent members to Norway to meet with the Norwegian Secret Service and Navy to plant explosives in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea.
June 2, 2022
*US warships arrived in Stockholm for BALTOPS 22, the annual exercise in the Baltic Region.
June 5, 2022
*The 13-day exercise, which featured 47 ships, 89 aircraft and 7,000 personnel, kicked off. NATO teams of divers planted mines around Bornholm Island for competing teams to find and destroy using the latest underwater technology.
Sept 26, 2022
*A Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. A few hours later, high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.
Within a few minutes, methane gas from the pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface.
Sept 27, 2022
Former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, in his now-deleted Twitter account, shared a photograph of the gas leak, captioned “Thank you, USA.”
September 2022
Average natural gas prices in Europe were over seven times higher than prices in the US.
Sept 30, 2022
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
Oct 6, 2022
The Swedish Security Service said they had evidence to back suspicions that the Nord Stream gas pipelines had been sabotaged.
Oct 10, 2022
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said Sweden will not share the findings of the crime scene investigation with Russia.
Oct 19, 2022
After preliminary investigations, Copenhagen Police, with the assistance of the Danish Defence Forces and in cooperation with the PET (Danish Security and Intelligence Service), “confirmed that extensive damage has been caused to Nord Stream 1 and 2 in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone, and that the damage was caused by powerful explosions.”
Nov 18, 2022
Swedish Public Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in a press release that the Nord Stream gas pipelines were deliberately sabotaged: “Analyses that have now been carried out show residues of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found.”
January 2023
US supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU rose by 154 percent year-on-year in 2022, data showed.
Late January 2023
US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland testified at a hearing of Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She called the damaged Nord Stream 2 “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
Feb 8, 2023
Award-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article titled “How America took out the Nord Stream Pipeline’.
Feb 16, 2023
Russia’s lower house of parliament said in a statement: “Members of the State Duma of...Russia are appealing to the United Nations Security Council with a proposal to initiate a thorough investigation of this clear act of international terrorism.”
Feb 21, 2023
UN Security Council held a briefing on the Nord Stream issue. Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN, said: “An objective, impartial and professional investigation into this matter, releasing the findings and pursuing accountability as soon as possible are not only for the sake of the incident itself, but also bear on the security of global transboundary infrastructure.”
*per report of seymour hersh
SOURCE: Media reports
