Nord Stream Attack Updates
United States complicity seems increasingly to be an open secret.
Radosław Sikorski, MEP, former Polish defence minister and husband of well-connected neoconservative intellectual Anne Appelbaum, has publicly thanked the United States for attacking the Nord Stream pipelines. Jim Geraghty, senior political correspondent for the American political journal National Review, has also praised the attacks in a brief piece called Who Will Rid Me of This Meddlesome Pipeline? He is proud that he has been arguing about the importance of taking Nord Stream 2 offline since February and suggests that the present attacks reflect his influence.
The biggest detail to break since I went to sleep yesterday, is this claim made by an anonymous intelligence source to Der Spiegel, that the CIA had warned Germany of Baltic pipeline attacks a few weeks ago:
The United States warned the German government weeks ago of possible attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. According to information from SPIEGEL, a corresponding tip from the US intelligence service CIA was received in Berlin in the summer.
Several persons familiar with the matter confirmed this.
Even before the invasion of Ukraine, Nato partners had repeatedly pointed to suspicious activities of Russian ships over nodes of the underwater networks.
However, an initial analysis of satellite images from the area of the incidents showed only inconspicuous ship traffic at first glance, security circles said.
The Tagesspiegel has a longer piece today trying to come up with a plausible motive for Russia. They imagine that a Russian attack might have had the purpose of allowing Gazprom to escape contractual requirements to deliver gas through Nord Stream 1, thus driving European energy prices higher. Alternatively, they propose it might’ve been a ruse to circumvent sanctions for the repair of the pipeline. To even retype these theses is to reveal their infirmity.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
