Two years of "sleeping" at the bottom of the deep sea, many suspicious details were "turned a blind eye"?

What remains of the Nord Stream megaproject lies deep under the Baltic Sea. More than two years after the biggest sabotage attack in European history, there are still more questions than answers, and have suspicious details been ‘turned a blind eye’?

Gas bubbles emerge from one of the leaking Nord Stream gas pipelines off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea, September 30, 2022. (Source: Getty)

On September 26, 2022, four explosions rocked the seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm. Over several days, large amounts of methane gas were "injected" into the Baltic Sea from three damaged sections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline - a project to transport gas from Russia to Germany.

Europe has been quick to feel the impact, with soaring energy prices hitting the German economy particularly hard. Nord Stream, which cost more than €10 billion to build, is not owned exclusively by Russia’s Gazprom, it also has shareholders in Germany (E.ON and Wintershall), the Netherlands (Gasunie) and France (Engie), all of whom have a claim.

Theories, speculations and rumours have surrounded the Nord Stream pipeline attacks since they unexpectedly blew up in 2022. So far, it seems that all the clues point to Russia - in February 2023, Germany's justice minister admitted that it was "unable to prove" Moscow's involvement in the explosions. So where do the clues lead?

The international media has claimed that the gas pipeline attack was the biggest act of sabotage in recent European history, as well as a terrible environmental disaster. But despite its scope and significance, two years later, official investigations have been marked by an eerie silence.

To date, there have been no arrests, nor have any suspects been questioned or charged.

In early June, after a two-year investigation, German prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant for Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a Ukrainian citizen with permanent residence in Poland, after he was captured on speed camera footage of a van carrying a group of saboteurs traveling from Poland to Germany in 2022. The Ukrainian diver and a group of people are accused of planning and executing the planting of explosives on the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

But Warsaw’s reluctance to provide administrative assistance allowed Zhuravlov to escape without even being questioned, and Polish authorities failed to arrest him before he crossed the border into Ukraine in early July, a move that is seen as a major blow to the German investigation.

Observers commented that the incident showed “unusual indifference to counter-terrorism” - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk at that time criticized the German government with a status line on X on August 17: “To all the initiators and sponsors of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. The only thing you should do today on this issue is to apologize and keep quiet."

Prime Minister Tusk appeared to be reacting to claims by former head of Germany's foreign intelligence agency (BND) August Hanning that the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline must have had Polish support.

In fact, the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline has deprived Germany of Russian gas and exacerbated the gas crisis in Europe. Germany is Russia's partner in the Nord Stream pipeline project. Poland has long claimed that its own security interests have been harmed by Nord Stream.

Immediately after the explosion, Swedish and Danish authorities concluded that only a state actor could have carried out such an attack, but they then abruptly closed the investigation without releasing any results.

The US then announced that it would also conduct investigations, which seemed particularly promising given that its intelligence agencies have extensive surveillance powers over the Baltics. However, mysteriously, they have not disclosed any findings either.

In an interview, Chervinsky, a former official of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), said the sabotage had two positive effects for Kiev, leaving Russia with only one main route for gas to Europe: a pipeline through Ukrainian territory. Despite the conflict, Ukraine still earns transit fees from Russian oil and gas, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

But the revelations threaten to upend Kiev-Berlin relations. Germany is Ukraine’s top financial and military aid provider after the United States, but the investigation has revealed a story few expected.

"An attack on this scale is reason enough to trigger NATO's collective defense clause, but our critical infrastructure was destroyed by a country we supported with large arms shipments and billions of dollars in cash," said a senior German official familiar with the investigation.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/dong-chay-phuong-bac-hai-nam-ngu-yen-duoi-day-bien-sau-nhieu-tinh-tiet-dang-ngo-da-duoc-nham-mat-lam-ngo-291988.html