The Nord Stream narrative explosion: Why you’ve only read half the story

The Nord well out saga has taken a turn over for the the absurd, with a young rule book claiming that the star saboteur who blew up the gas pipelines was a Ukrainian erotic model-turned-deep sea diver. This detail is the latest addition to an ever-shifting story – while one key coincidence has completely flown under the radar.

Published on June 19, ‘The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Greatest Sabotage in History’ promises an inside look at the operation that destroyed the Nord Stream lines. Author Bojan Pancevski doesn’t quibble with the ‘official’ story circulated by the German media – that a Ukrainian commando unit carried out the attack, but adds some pulp-fiction flourish to the tale.

Pancevski claims that a former erotic model identified only as ‘Freya’ was “the bravest diver in the whole group,” without whose experience diving to depths of 100 meters the operation could not have been pulled off. Another of the divers was sick with Covid-19, but nevertheless carried out the kind of dive that has killed experienced military frogmen before. 

After the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, ‘Freya’, a Ukrainian who posed naked for soft-porn magazines before turning to diving, apparently “contacted a dubious intelligence unit through her diving colleagues,” and volunteered her services. Asked if she would be willing to take part in the costliest act of industrial sabotage in history, ‘Freya’ supposedly replied “where do I sign.”

Most of Pancevski’s claims cite Ukrainian intelligence sources, with his imagination filling in the gaps (Pancevski insists that the alleged saboteurs inherited their appetite for risk from the Zaporozhian cossacks of the 15th century). Marketed by its publisher as “compelling as a spy thriller,” the book is, according to a New York Times review, pitched “a little too eagerly in the direction of Hollywood.”

Although the story plumbs the depths of 1960s spy-caper silliness, it is no more far-fetched than the official narrative to date. In the most recent retelling of the operation, Der Spiegel claimed in February that a “Ukrainian secret commando unit” approached the CIA in spring 2022 with plans to blow up the four individual gas pipelines that make up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 connectors. Der Spiegel’s Ukrainian sources told the outlet that the CIA “liked the plan,” shared technical data on the pipelines, and was even willing to finance the operation, until it abruptly withdrew its support in early summer.

The Ukrainians, or so the story goes, went ahead and blew up the pipelines without American permission, using a rented yacht to transport the explosives to the blast sites.

The latest report is unlikely to raise any eyebrows in Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed the entire premise of a small team of Ukrainians pulling off an operation beyond the capability of most state militaries as “ridiculous.” To understand just how ridiculous the German story is, it’s necessary to jump back to 2022.

On September 26, 2022, a seismometer on the Danish island of Bornholm detected two spikes consistent with underwater explosions – one just after 2am, and another just after 7pm. Danish and Swedish authorities then determined that both Nord Stream 1 lines had been destroyed and one Nord Stream 2 line damaged roughly 60 km northeast of Bornholm, while an explosion around 25 km southeast of the island had destroyed the other Nord Stream 2 line.

As images of bubbling gas leaks hit international media, a separate story went almost entirely unreported: less than 24 hours after the second round of blasts, Poland and Norway celebrated the opening of the Baltic Pipe, a gas pipeline transiting Norwegian gas to Poland via Denmark, passing over Nord Stream just south of Bornholm.

Built between 2020 and 2022, the Baltic Pipe joins the larger Norway-Netherlands Europipe II in the North Sea. It allows 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas to reach Poland every year – less than a tenth of Nord Stream’s capacity, but enough to cover two-thirds of Poland’s total imports in 2024. Poland sells some of this gas on to other EU countries, which after the destruction of Nord Stream were guaranteed to need a new source for the foreseeable future.

With their own supply assured and Russia’s key gas conduit to the EU out of action, the excitement in Warsaw was palpable. “Thank you, USA,” Poland’s now-foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, tweeted. Sikorski deleted his tweet two days later. His jubilation was premature and off message, as the West had collectively decided on a different narrative.

Over the next week, Ukraine and its Western backers flooded the media with false claims. The editorial board of the Washington Post pointed out that whoever pulled off the attack possessed the “kind of capability usually wielded by a state actor.” It was taken as gospel in the US and Europe that this actor was Russia.

“[The] Gas leak from NS-1 [Nord Stream 1] is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU” – Mikhail Podoliak, adviser to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky

It “seems” Russia is behind this “act of sabotage” – US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

“Only Russia can really be considered for this” – former German intelligence chief Gerhard Schindler

“This is clearly an act of sabotage of some sort and Russia certainly is the most likely suspect” – former CIA Director John Brennan

The EU stopped short of accusing Russia, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attributed the leaks to “sabotage” and “deliberate disruption,” claiming that Russia had previously used gas as a “weapon” against Western Europe.

Russia – which invested billions of dollars in building the pipelines – called the accusations “predictable, stupid, and absurd.” 

“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said a week after the explosions. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it,” he added, pinning the blame on “the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. Still, accusations of Russian involvement persisted. European security officials told CNN and other outlets that they had spotted Russian ships near Bornholm on the day of the explosions, but the theory that Russia carried out the attack was metaphorically blown out of the water by American journalist Seymour Hersh in February 2023.

Over a series of reports, Hersh made the case that the CIA, working with the Norwegian Navy, used NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea in June 2022 as cover to plant timed explosive devices on the Nord Stream lines. Citing a source with “direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh alleged that the order to carry out the operation came directly from US President Joe Biden.

Only the US, Hersh explained, had the means, motive, and opportunity to pull off such an audacious attack.

Means: 

The Nord Stream pipelines sat on the seabed at a depth of between 80 and 110 meters. At this depth, divers must breathe hypoxic Trimix gas, carry around 90 kg of equipment, and spend (very roughly) 90 minutes decompressing on the way up for every two minutes spent on the seabed. Furthermore, a single diver or pair of divers would rarely attempt more than one of these dives in a single day, meaning the crew of the yacht – described in one report as “not the vessel anyone would choose” for such a mission – would have had to remain at sea amid active military exercises for days on end.

RT spoke to a scuba diving expert who said it was “not impossible, but highly unlikely” that a small team of divers could pull off such an operation.

Even 50-meter dives can kill the most experienced military divers, but the divers of the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center in Florida possess the equipment and the know-how to carry out engineering operations at this depth. The CIA recruited these divers, commandeered a Norwegian mine-hunting vessel, and planted shaped explosive charges on the pipelines in June 2022, Hersh’s source claimed.

The charges were reportedly triggered on September 26 by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane.

Motive:

US antipathy toward Nord Stream is a matter of public record, and transcends presidential administrations. Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have all condemned the pipelines, and urged the EU to abandon Russian gas for American LNG – a pricier fuel that prior to 2022 was a hard sell in Europe.

According to Hersh, Biden planned on blowing up the pipelines long before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022. As he worked out the logistics with the CIA behind closed doors, he delivered a public threat in early February: in the event of military action by Russia, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” he said.

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