Nord Stream limited hangout: what does it mean?

The latest revelations raise more questions than answers

Over the past 48 hours, a new Wall Street Journal investigative report into the Nord Stream bombing has set the internet alight. The article purports to provide the final word on the attack that occurred nearly two years ago, and has since resulted in a series of seeming endless theories and speculation.

The new “official” story presented by the WSJ goes as follows: the plan to take out the Nord Stream pipeline was initially approved by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in “agreement” with the then-and-current Polish president Andrzej Duda, according to the former head of German intelligence; the following month, however, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD learned of the plot and warned the CIA, which promptly informed Germany of the plan and told Zelenskyy to stop the operation. Zelenskyy thus ordered Ukraine’s then-Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi — who has since been dismissed due to disagreements with Zelenskyy over the war strategy, and sent to London as Ukraine’s new ambassador to Britain — to abort the operation.

But the general ignored the order and, following a night of heavy drinking, went rogue, pushing ahead with the original plan behind Zelenskyy’s back. The plan, privately funded by businessmen to the tune of $300,000, involved a six-member crew, which included experienced civilian divers, renting a 50-foot sailing yacht named Andromeda, sailing out to the Baltic Sea and, undetected by NATO, planting explosives in two different sites along the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, located in the Swedish and Danish exclusive economic zone (EEZs). According to the Wall Street Journal, just days after the bombing in late September 2022, the CIA was able to provide European intelligence agencies a detailed report of how the covert operation went down.

German investigators were later able to identify the boat and thus gain valuable evidence, which has apparently led — according to separate reports published over the past few days — to Germany issuing in June an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen named, funnily enough, “Volodymyr Z.”, identifying him as the chief suspect for placing the explosives that destroyed the pipelines. Z. was allegedly living in Poland at the time the arrest warrant was issued, but Polish authorities claim they didn’t apprehend the suspect as a result of Berlin not including his name in a database of wanted persons. Z. was thus allowed to leave Poland and is now believed to be back in Ukraine.

This is what the latest reports have revealed so far. So what should we make of them? Let’s begin by taking the reports at face value. Even assuming things went down exactly as the WSJ claims they did, the story represents nonetheless a damning indictment for Germany — and NATO governments more in general. It would mean that Germany and its European EU-NATO allies have known since day one that Ukraine, albeit in a purportedly “rogue capacity”, is behind the attack, and yet they not only spread baseless rumours about Russia being the culprit — but have, since then, sent more than €100 billion in financial aid and military equipment (the largest share having been provided by Germany itself) to the country that they were aware had committed the worst act of industrial terrorism against Germany (and indeed Europe itself) in history, in order to fight the country that built the pipeline in the first place. This in itself in astonishing.

A second point worth reflecting upon is the reaction of European officials and pundits to the WSJ story. Instead of vehemently denying this version of events, as Ukraine predictably has done, they have adopted a different approach, which is to claim, more or less explicitly, either that the attack wasn’t a big deal after all — or, even more incredibly, that it was a laudable thing. Thus, for example, Janis Kluge, Deputy Head of Eastern Europe and Eurasia Division at the German foreign policy think tank SWP, reposted a tweet of mine commenting the WSJ story with the following comment:

Regular reminder that the Nord Stream bombing had zero effect on European gas supply in 2022 because Russia had already cut off supply four weeks earlier.

This is a textbook example of gaslighting: the argument that the attack wasn’t that serious simply because gas wasn’t flowing in the pipelines at the time of the bombing is patently absurd. The bombing of a country’s strategic energy infrastructure easily meets the definition of an act of war (casus belli).

The ludicrousness of Kluge’s claim is well captured by a senior German official quoted by the WSJ: “An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO” — he told the paper — “but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash”. Indeed, following the attack, none other Zelenskyy’s presidential advisor correctly described the Nord Stream bombing as “a terrorist attack” and “an act of aggression against the EU” — and then attempted to pin the responsibility on Russia.

Other comments were even more deranged. Luis Garicano, professor of economics at the London School of Economics and former vice-president of Renew Europe, Macron’s pro-European group in the European Parliament, posted the following on X:

Ukraine’s destruction of Nordstream 2 is entirely justified. The country is fighting for its existence!!!! Europe should grow some guts and some understanding of what is at stake. And Germany needs to lay off this ridiculous criminal procedure. It is outrageous.

Here we have a former MEP openly endorsing an act of terrorism/war against a European country. But perhaps the most incredible comment was that of Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who wrote on X:

To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.

Just to be clear, here we have the Polish PM telling Germany and any concerned European citizens to shut up about a major act of industrial terrorism/war committed against a German (European, in fact) infrastructure — basically an indirect confession that he thinks the bombing was a good thing and that Poland (i.e., NATO) almost certainly had a hand in it.

The narrative shift that we’re witnessing from the European neocon camp is truly breathtaking: in short, we’ve gone from “Russia definitely committed this terrible act of terrorism/war” to “We have no idea who did it but it definitely wasn’t Ukraine or NATO” to “Ukraine had every right to destroy Nord Stream — and anyone who claims otherwise is a Putin stooge”. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t see that one coming.

A third point raised by the Wall Street Journal article — again, assuming we take it at face value — is: why now? It’s well known that the US security-intelligence apparatus uses the mainstream media to convey messages to its allies and enemies alike, and we can assume that at the very least the paper would not publish such a story without pre-approval from US officials; thus, it’s worth asking why such a story was published in the first place, considering that there was no public pressure surrounding the Nord Stream bombing, and that it certainly doesn’t paint Zelenskyy, and Ukraine more in general, in a good light, even as it exculpates the Ukrainian president from any direct involvement in the attack. Could it be a way of sending a message to Zelenskyy that Western support for Ukraine is fading? It’s certainly a possibility worth considering.

But perhaps the most important question raised by the WSJ story is: is it believable? Is it believable that the US administration, or its security-intelligence apparatus, not only had no role in the attack, but actually tried to stop it from occurring? It’s no secret that the US has alway been opposed to Nord Stream, and in particular to Nord Stream 2 — a second pipeline parallel to the existing gas line, Nord Stream 1 (in operation since 2011), which would have doubled annual capacity, and which was expected to enter into service in 2022.

It’s easy to see why the US establishment wasn’t happy about this development: more gas would have meant stronger Russian-German relations, which would have likely led to an expansion of trade, increased cultural exchanges, and ultimately to a new security architecture that would have made NATO’s security umbrella increasingly redundant and weakened US hegemony over the European continent.

This is why the United States has been attempting to torpedo the project since 2017, when the US Congress under Trump passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which authorised the US president to impose sanctions on companies involved in the construction of Russian energy export pipelines. Then, in 2019, Trump signed the Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act (PEESA), which sought to prevent the construction of the pipeline through US sanctions against the companies involved, causing the pipe-laying to stop for a year. In early 2022, both Biden and Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden administration, known for her famous “Fuck the EU” phone call, threatened to shut down Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine. 

It’s therefore not surprising that almost immediately after the attack many suggested that the US might be behind the sabotage. Social media users pointed to a press conference in February where US president Biden said: “If Russia invades… then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”. When asked by a reporter “But how will you do that exactly, since… the project is in Germany’s control?”, Biden replied: “I promise you, we will be able to do that”. Twenty days earlier, then-Under Secretary of State Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing: “I want to be very clear to you today”, she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”. 

Meanwhile, just a few hours after the news about the bombing broke, Radek Sikorski — the current Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, who at the time was chairman of the European Parliament’s EU-US delegation — tweeted an image of the leak along with the words “Thank you, USA”. Obviously, many interpreted the tweet as meaning that Sikorski thought, or knew, that the US was behind the pipeline attack (he later said it was a “joke”). A few days after the bombing, the US Secretary of State himself, Anthony Blinken said that the Nord Stream attack offered a “tremendous opportunity” to end Europe’s dependency on Russian energy — a strange choice of language for what effectively amounted to a terrorist attack on a strategic infrastructure of a NATO country. In the weeks after the attack, even high-profile commentators such as Jeffrey Sachs suggested that the act of sabotage was more likely to have been a “US action” — one directed first and foremost at Germany. 

The theory gained further traction when the famous Pulitzer-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh, in February 2023, published an article in which he alleged that the attack was ordered by the White House and conducted by CIA-US Navy operatives, with the help of Norway, who mined the pipelines four months before the explosion, in June 2022, during a NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, and then subsequently remotely detonated the mines.

In light of all this, it’s worth taking the Wall Street Journal story with a very big pinch of salt. And yet, even assuming this is a limited hangout, which seems very likely, the question remains: why now?

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope 

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