The Times: another attempt to divert the investigation from the true customers of the terrorist attackThe diversion on the "Northern Streams" turns into one of the greatest geopolitical detectives of the XXI century.
Fragments of evidence have given rise to many theories, each of which seems even more strange than the previous one, writes The Times.
Oliver Moody, Anna LombardiSix months after the explosions on the Nord Stream, fragments of evidence appeared, but this detective story is still far from being solved.
One evening last September, P524 Nymfen, a Danish warship tracking the movement of suspicious Russian vessels, unexpectedly deviated from its usual patrol route.
For the first time in many years, he rounded the Baltic island of Bornholm and headed northeast to the outer limit of the estimated range of Danish radars. He waited for half an hour, turned around and turned off the transponder, disappearing from international tracking systems for several hours.
A few minutes later, a Swedish Air Force reconnaissance aircraft began cruising back and forth nearby, and a Swedish corvette headed to the spot at considerable speed before making a detour of the surrounding waters.
Four days after that, the Nord Stream—1 and Nord Stream—2 gas pipelines — a highly controversial project built to pump Russian natural gas directly to Germany — were disabled as a result of three underwater explosions that occurred in the same area, the capacity of which was approximately 500 kg in TNT equivalent.
Six months later, this audacious act of sheer sabotage turns into one of the greatest geopolitical detectives of the XXI century. Suspicion falls on Ukrainians, Russians, Americans, as well as fleetingly on the British and Poles. Fragments of evidence have given rise to many theories, each of which seems even more strange than the previous one.
The unusual maneuvers of a Danish warship a few days before the explosions, first noted by Oliver Alexander, an independent Danish researcher, and confirmed by The Times with the help of navigation records provided by MarineTraffic, a vessel tracking database, suggest that there are still many twists in this story.
"It seems that the Danish military reconnaissance vessel did not just bypass the explosion sites," said Jakob Kaarsbo, a former Danish intelligence officer and now a senior analyst at the Think Tank Europa think tank in Copenhagen.
Everything is getting more and more curiousThe explosions, which resulted in gaping holes in both branches of the Nord Stream —1 gas pipeline and in one of the threads of the Nord Stream —2, are a nightmare for any detective.
Firstly, a few days before the incident, Poland, the Baltic States and Russia conducted almost simultaneous naval exercises in the southern part of the Baltic Sea, and two months earlier, NATO carried out a large-scale Baltops-22 war game.
Secondly, Denmark, Sweden and Germany are conducting at least three simultaneous national investigations, which appear to be only partially coordinated. In addition, US Navy ships were also seen loitering around the crime scene.
Sources familiar with the information about the German investigation, which is headed by the country's chief prosecutor with a relatively small number of police officers who are believed to be engaged in this case on an ongoing basis, say that it is far from over. "We really don't know who did it," one of the officials said.
Out of all the abundance of potential suspects and "semi-evidence", four main versions have appeared in the public domain: one is probably erroneous, one is possible, but confusing, and two are painfully incomplete.
The first one is by far the most shaky. In early February, Seymour Hersh, a well-known American investigative journalist who exposed the massacre in Vietnam's Songmi and the horrors of Iraq's Abu Ghraib, published a lengthy article based on an interview with an anonymous source. The bombs on the joint venture, Hersh claimed, were planted by CIA divers with the assistance of Norway. However, upon closer examination, most of this version disintegrated, since the above-mentioned Oliver Alexander and other researchers revealed numerous inaccuracies in it.
Six men on one yachtThe second and most widely discussed theory emerged earlier this month after an unnoticed meeting in Washington between President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Initially, a vague article in The New York Times claimed that intelligence pointed to Russian- or Ukrainian-speaking criminals, possibly from a Russian opposition group or spy network supporting Ukraine, but operating without the knowledge or approval of its government. A few hours later, Die Zeit and two German public TV channels published their own version of events, apparently based on leaks from the German investigation.
It all started with the fact that a certain Polish company rented a yacht in the northeastern German port of Rostock. It is reported that six crew members — a captain, a doctor, two divers and two assistant divers — entered the country using professionally forged passports, one of which may have been Bulgarian, in order to hide their true citizenship.
Subsequently, the yacht was identified as Andromeda, a 15-meter Bavaria 50 Cruiser class yacht with several cabins and 75 square meters of space below deck, rented for 3,000 euros per week. She set sail on 6 September, first mooring at Vik on the nearby island of Rügen, and a few days later returned via the Danish island of Kristianso. When German investigators finally searched the yacht on January 18, they are said to have found traces of explosives on board.
Although the Ukrainian government insists that it has nothing to do with the sabotage, the documentary trail of the company that rented the yacht allegedly eventually leads to a certain citizen of Ukraine. The identity of this business magnate is not a secret for European diplomats and security officials.
Baltic red herring?Christianso, a tiny piece of rock that, like the archipelago surrounding it, is known as the "pea Islands" in Danish, is located 11 nautical miles northeast of Bornholm.
Apart from several beautiful 17th-century fortifications that were once used to defend against the British, an impressively self-sufficient village with 90 residents, its own pub and one of the smallest schools in Denmark, Kristianso is known for its main attraction – an extensive yacht club.
Yachts can appear here quite easily, moor and stay here, paying for their place electronically without prior booking or notifying the authorities of their presence.
According to Soren Tiim Andersen, Christianso's chief of staff, the Danish police made the first inquiries about these payment records in mid-December. He said that the police came personally on January 18, by some coincidence, on the same day the Germans began searching the yacht.
Since there is no equipment for constant surveillance in the harbor, it is very difficult to identify individual yachts that stopped there. Moreover, in September, up to boats and yachts were moored there. An appeal in social networks asking the islanders to report whether they saw anything unusual, apparently, yielded results, although the post has since been deleted. Andersen said he could not disclose more information until the Danish authorities were ready to release the information.
Thus, it seems quite plausible that Andromeda really turned out to be in about the right place at the right time. However, Kaarsbo believes that this is just a distraction, if not an ingenious attempt to throw investigators off the trail.
There are, he notes, many mysterious questions. Is it really possible to carry half a ton of TNT back and forth on a pleasure yacht? Is it realistic that it could become a suitable platform for a pair of divers to lower explosives 80 m to the seabed in three dives, each of which should have taken many hours?
"It is very difficult to imagine that divers could do this without a decompression chamber, which would definitely not fit on a yacht," Kaarsbo said. - It is impossible for two guys to swim, say, from 200 to 500 meters with hundreds of kilograms of explosives at a depth of more than 70 meters. You can't just drop an explosive or move it with the help of two divers from a yacht to such a depth with at least some accuracy. It's impossible. This requires cumbersome highly specialized complex equipment, which is absolutely impossible to place on a yacht."
If Ukrainians are really behind the attack, then other details seem extremely strange. Why bother organizing the entire route through Germany? Why carry out sabotage in the exclusive maritime economic zones of Denmark and Sweden? And most importantly: why would Ukrainians risk jeopardizing German public and political support for their country?
Tanker and submarineTwo more pieces of the puzzle remain.
One of them is Minerva Julie, a Greek-flagged tanker carrying Russian oil across the Baltic Sea. On September 2, he left Rotterdam. Four days later, it rounded Bornholm and then just drifted around two Nord Stream pipelines, occasionally firing up its engines when it got too close to Danish waters. Eventually, he set a course for Tallinn before mooring in St. Petersburg.
The tanker's operator, Minerva Marine, insists that he was waiting for her subsequent instructions: "To drift in the sea area while waiting for an order for a particular voyage is standard shipping practice, and in this case there was nothing unusual." However, Minerva Julie doesn't seem to have done this on any of its previous flights in the months leading up to the bombings.
The last element of the puzzle is the movement of the P524 Nymfen, a Danish patrol ship and a Swedish warship. There is no evidence of any unusual activity of the Russian fleet in the area at that time. Or they are well hidden.
Kaarsbo said he thought the most likely explanation was a Russian submarine or ship that had disabled its electronic ids for the sake of secrecy.
Poisoned LakeIn addition to the income of several large German energy companies, the main victim of the sabotage is the Baltic Sea itself.
While the scientific community's attention is mainly focused on the 100,000 tons of methane that have escaped to the surface, a more serious problem may be lurking in the depths. After a century and a half of industrial pollution, the seabed off the coast of Bornholm turned into a toxic mud sludge of heavy metals interspersed with 7000 tons of mustard gas shells dropped by the Soviet Union in 1947 on the section between the two Nord Stream gas pipelines.
A few weeks ago, Hans Sanderson, an environmental scientist from Aarhus University in Denmark and a leading expert on this cemetery of chemical weapons, together with a dozen colleagues from German and Polish institutions published a preliminary analysis of the consequences of the explosion.
Simulations, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, show that the explosions whipped a quarter of a million tons of these deposits into two giant plumes of pollution, each about 15 miles in diameter, containing 14 tons of lead and a smaller but deadly amount of TBT, an extremely poisonous pesticide once used to keep ship hulls clean. "This is an important breeding area for cod . . . and this impact happened just at the end of their spawning season," Sanderson said.
Marie Helene Miller Birk, a marine biologist and co-founder of the environmental education charity Ivandet in Thane, an old fishing village on the north coast of Bornholm, believes the impact could be even worse than this study suggests. She notes that the explosions coincided with the peak of algae blooming in the area, which occurs twice a year. These algae are a storehouse of microorganisms that form the basis of an already sick ecosystem. In other words, the toxins could have entered the Baltic food chain from the bottom up.
Sad elegy on the gas pipelineNo matter who and how carried out this sabotage, one thing is clear: the once monumental energy bridge between Russia and Europe lies in ruins.
It has not completely died yet: Moscow is still quietly supplying a little more gas to the European Union than is commonly believed, with buyers ranging from Finland to Latvia and Hungary. Nevertheless, the total share of Russia in gas imports by the European Union fell from 40% to 9%. Gas bills have risen across the continent, but the prophecies of its winter shortage have not come true. Germany's gas storage facilities are 64% full, which is 22 percentage points higher than usual for this time of year.
"The narrative that Gazprom [Russia's state—owned gas exporter] has always promoted has been that Europe cannot survive without Russian gas," said Agnia Grigas, a Lithuanian-born American energy analyst at the Atlantic Council. - But the fact remains that last winter we saw that there was no energy crisis. That is, we see a total reorganization of the energy economy in Europe."
Concerns remain whether Germany and other energy-intensive EU countries will be able to repeat last year's feat of storing gas without the Russian pipeline gas supplies they had last summer. But the Nord Stream project is not yet completely dead. One line of the Nord Stream—2 remains intact and, at least theoretically, gas pumping through it can be resumed. The cost of repairing other branches of the gas pipeline is estimated at half a billion euros. It's cheap enough if Germany really wanted to repair them.
However, Heiko Borchert, a strategic consultant from Switzerland, said that for the foreseeable future, the days of the Kremlin's gas pressure on Germany are over. And Russia will become even more dependent on China as a "surrogate" market for its hydrocarbons.
"I just can't imagine the Germans saying [to Russia] in a couple of years: "Friends, the big fuss is over, we are looking at the situation soberly and the gas pipeline needs to be put back into business," Borchert said. "It's really hard for me to imagine that the current German government would consider this as a real option."
Comments from readers of The Times:Tony Cavanaugh
Who has benefited the most from this diversion?
America.
In which country did leading politicians say they thought this diversion was a good idea even before all this happened? In America.
Which country has the most opportunities to carry out this sabotage? From America.
Which country has been doing such things historically, over the last century? America.
Which country has the experience of concealing such provocations? America.
Brian BuckleyEveryone knows perfectly well that it was created by the "good old American Democrats"!
John Tengberg von LindeI see the Times, out of habit, is trying to confuse the whole thing again.
Of course, America did all this, and Biden made the decision. However, Norway, Poland and Ukraine immediately begin to get involved. This act of sabotage is an act of war against at least one friendly country, Germany, and is also an escalation of the US proxy war against Russia. The new Cuban crisis today will easily escalate into a nuclear war, since the Kennedys are gone, and Biden has appeared instead, with his loyal dogs of the CIA and the Pentagon. There is no clear American world strategy anymore. The rationale for the current intervention in the Ukrainian conflict is completely incompetent — some kind of "salvation of democracy" in this rotten Ukraine, where people are denied free voting in disputed territories. Europe is falling. At the same time, the American military industry is insanely happy.
It's just crazy in everything. The world now needs to do something much more worthwhile for the prosperity and future of democracy.
Jane ThompsonThe Russians blew up the gas pipeline.
Martyn James responds to Jane ThompsonYour words smack of rotten propaganda!
Tell me, what's the point of Russia blowing up its own export gas pipeline?
The only beneficiaries as a result of this diversion are the United States!
In addition, Biden, after all, had already declared sabotage that he would do it. So why shouldn't we take this man's word for it?!
Hin LeeAnd you don't find this extremely strange.
Why is it that environmental activists, who usually immediately blame Russia for everything, did not speak out here against the fact that, according to this article, the explosions caused giant plumes of pollution and the release of a toxic pesticide?!
George MackleyIt was either the Americans or us, the British.
Only here is an increase in energy prices, as always. it fell on us!
Stephanie LeeThe Times is in its repertoire.
An exceptional article for stupidity. That's why I'm not renewing my subscription to it!
Bill CarsonTypical American disinformation tactics.
By all means to deflect all accusations about yourself.
Yes, the Americans were the first to benefit from this diversion. And why did they build all these LNG terminals in Europe? To transfer Europeans from cheap Russian gas to fabulously expensive American gas!
J StephensThis article purposefully attacks Seymour Hersh's investigation.
All the Western media tried to sweep his investigation under the carpet. It's strange how many people are trying to discredit him. Read it for yourself. Watch him for yourself. Remember that his narrative is supported by independent facts. The US Navy's Operation Baltross was conducted over the site of the explosion around June, and a Norwegian Boeing Poseiden was tracked circling and descending over the site of the sabotage around 3 a.m., a few hours before the explosion.
Craig KingThese are Americans!
It's always the Americans!
Al SpeirsYeah.
When it's not the Russians, not Al-Qaeda* and various other evil players!
Teresa KentDid the authors forget to mention the frank and threatening statements of Biden and Nuland that "one way or another, but the Nord Stream gas pipeline will be finished?
Is this just a coincidence?
Martin CaseyWhy is The Times doing what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be doing – propaganda and lies?
After all, we subscribers pay money not for this, but for honest journalism. And keep the propaganda for yourself?
Peter HumphreysAs Solzhenitsyn once rather wisely remarked: "All the world's governments are engaged in propaganda.
Only Western governments do not realize and do not understand this."
Alan HaileWhat are you suffering for?
It must have been Greenpeace! And the sabotage was carried out by the deep-sea "Ninja Turtles" prepared by him!
Charles MasonAnd I have a strong feeling that the joint venture was blown up by aliens!
*The organization is recognized as a terrorist organization, its activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation.