According to a New York Times (NYT) report on Tuesday, US intelligence officials believe that a “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage in September.
Without giving any details about the alleged group, anonymous American officials told NYT that Washington has not drawn any “firm conclusions” about the new intelligence received, “leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.”
Ukraine Denies Involvement
Following the NYT report’s release on Tuesday, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak refuted all allegations of the Ukrainian government’s involvement, claiming that the Kyiv regime “has no information about ‘pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups.’”
Although I enjoy collecting amusing conspiracy theories about 🇺🇦 government, I have to say: 🇺🇦 has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about "pro-🇺🇦 sabotage groups". What happened to the Nord Stream pipelines? "They sank," as they say in RF itself...
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) March 7, 2023
Experts believe that Ukraine would have the most to gain if the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connected Russia to Germany, went out of action.
Russia Has “No Faith” in US Investigation
Russia’s Minister-Counselor of the Russian Embassy in the US, Andrey Ledenev, asserted that Moscow has “no faith in the ‘impartiality’ of the conclusions of the US intelligence.”
“We perceive anonymous ‘leaks’ as nothing more than an attempt to confuse those who are sincerely trying to get to the bottom of things in this egregious crime [...] and shift the blame from the statesmen who ordered and coordinated the attacks in the Baltic Sea to some abstract individuals,” Ledenev asserted.
Gonna need a better alternate story than "some pro Ukrainian guys did it" (say anonymous officials who provide no evidence). Several American officials either said Nord Stream 2 would never get started and/or celebrated its destruction.
— Jacob Silverman (@SilvermanJacob) March 7, 2023
Further, the Russian minister affirmed that his country would “spare no effort” for justice to prevail.
Background
On 26 September 2022, there was a sharp drop in the pressure in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, considered to be “Russia’s most important energy corridor,” as it has a capacity of 110 billion cubic metres — over half of Russia’s total gas export amount.
Sweden and Denmark confirmed that the drop resulted from a series of explosions that caused leaks in the pipelines, rendering them unusable. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the incident was an act of “sabotage.”
A pro-Ukranian group may be responsible for sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. We always love to think big -- state actors -- but when we do we miss the paradoxical power of the small. https://t.co/5RcTqUU2mH
— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) March 7, 2023
While Western officials have hinted that Russia orchestrated the explosions, the Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as “stupid” and instead highlighted that the US was motivated to disrupt the pipelines to increase its export of Liquified Natural Gas to Europe.
American journalist Seymour Hersh, too, claimed that Washington was behind the attack last month, without giving any substantial evidence.