U.S. Did Not Stop Nord Stream Attack, Polish FM Suggests
Denmark ended its investigation into the blast with little fanfare
Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister who thanked the U.S. after the Nord Stream pipeline bombings in a now-deleted tweet, told a newspaper that if media reports are to be believed, the U.S. — at the minimum — did not act to stop the attacks.
“If we believe media, it [the attack] was carried out by someone who was interested in it. And the US had preliminary information about this and did not interfere with this move,” he told the paper Rzeczpospolita, according to Al Mayadeen.
With little fanfare, Denmark announced earlier this month that it ended its investigation into the blast and said it will go down as one of the great mysteries. These investigators said it was obvious that there was sabotage, but not enough grounds for a criminal case, Al Jazeera reported.
Shortly after the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, Sikorski could not contain his excitement and posted a photo of the disastrous methane leak in the Baltic Sea after the explosions and wrote, “Thank you, U.S.A.”
About three weeks before Russian tanks began to move into Ukraine last year, President Joe Biden held a news conference in Washington with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said—in no uncertain terms—that the first casualty of the war would be the Nord Stream pipeline.
“If Russia invades…again, then there will be no Nord Stream 2,” he said. “We will bring an end to it.”
Biden was asked to clarify the remark and responded, “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”
His remark appeared to be an administration-wide talking point at the time.
A month earlier, Victoria Nuland, the outgoing undersecretary of state, also mentioned Nord Stream’s fate if Russia was to attack.
“We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies and I want to be clear with you today,” she said. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote an in-depth account of how the Biden administration orchestrated the pipeline attack.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, told reporters that the Hersh report shows the need for an open and transparent investigation into the culprits “into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”
“It’s impossible to leave this without finding the perpetrators and punishing them,” he said.
The U.S. has completely denied the Hersh report, but Biden is not the only person in Washington who showed their cards.
Nuland addressed a Senate hearing in February and told Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s reaction to the bombing also raised eyebrows. He said, “Ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. 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.”
TRENDPOST: Can you imagine for a moment if Russian President Vladimir Putin made a threat against a key piece of infrastructure that ended up being attacked and destroyed? The cable news outlets would be covering the incident 24 hours a day.