Nord Stream pipeline sabotage attributed to US by Sachs
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An Irish MEP unleashed fury at the EU for its investigation into the Nord Stream pipeline attack, the major Baltic Sea gas system linking Russia to Europe that blew up in September. Mick Wallace, the MEP for Ireland South, has blown his top at the European Commission, dishing out some damming accusations during an impassioned speech in the European Parliament. He alleged that the EU is being “subservient to the US” by failing to ask whether it blew up the Nord Stream systems.
This is despite, although investigations are yet to determine the culprit, the West previously appearing to agree that Russian actors were likely to have been behind the clandestine explosions.
Mr Wallace said: “Only last September, Commissions President Ursula von der Leyen stated that it was ‘paramount to now investigate the Nord Stream pipeline attack and that any deliberate disruption of active European energy is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest possible response’. The strongest possible response?”
He then pointed to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s recent blog post which cited an unidentified source as saying that US navy divers destroyed the pipelines with explosives under President Joe Biden’s orders.
While the White House has dismissed these claims as “utterly false and complete fiction”, while Norway’s foreign ministry said the allegations were “nonsense”, Mr Wallace believes the EU should be asking more questions.
He continued: “Hersh has a long track record of journalistic integrity. This was a premeditated terrorist attack on European critical infrastructure. It was also environmental terrorism. Does the EU care? Do you need to know who did it or do you want to know? Hersh says the US did it, did you ask them?
“Have we become so subservient, has the EU become so subservient, to US empire that we can’t even ask them if they did it. Is that a f*****g joke.”
This also comes after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued that Mr Hersh’s blog post should be getting more attention, adding that he was surprised it the Western media had not been providing greater coverage of it.
He told reporters: “The world must find out the truth about who carried out this act of sabotage. This is a very dangerous precedent: if someone did it once, they can do it again anywhere in the world.”
The Kremlin’s mouthpiece then called for “an open international investigation of this unprecedented attack on international critical infrastructure”.
He added that “it is impossible to leave this without uncovering those responsible and punishing them”.
The Nord Stream pipeline is a major gas system that normally transits supplies from Russia into Germany via the Baltic Sea.
The attack came while Russia was keeping Nord Stream offline, which it blamed on delayed maintenance repairs. The White House claimed this was an indication that Russia was using energy as a “weapon against European consumers” as it continued to delay the resumption of pipeline flows.
But the leaks caused by explosions to Nord Stream 1 and not yet operational Nord Stream 2 led much of the West to conclude that the incident was “certainly an act of Russian sabotage”.
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Seismologists in Denmark registered explosions in the area, just east of Bornholm Island, a strategic Danish outpost sabotage, measuring around 2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale.
The attack caused a spike in gas prices in Europe up to 12 percent in the weeks that followed. It came after previous moves from Russia to withhold gas supplies to the continent sent prices soaring, worsening the energy crisis that erupted as a result of the war in Ukraine.
According to Daniel Kochis, a senior policy analyst for European affairs in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, Russia’s “wartime arsenal now appears to include sabotage of underwater pipelines”.
He wrote in a commentary piece in The Heritage Foundation: “The sabotage is also meant to showcase Russia’s ability to sabotage underwater infrastructure.
“The timing is no accident; alongside the recently announced Russian mobilization, the leaders of Denmark, Norway, and Poland just joined together at a ceremony to open a new pipeline bringing Norwegian gas to Poland via the Baltic Sea.
“The Nord Stream dress rehearsal could presage future attacks against pipelines feeding Europe with energy. If Europe wants to import gas from Algeria, or Azerbaijan, or Norway to replace Russian molecules, then Putin may take efforts to staunch the supply via attacks on pipelines.”
Express.co.uk has contacted the European Commission for comment.
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