This past Wednesday, spokespeople for the U.S. Government stated that a recent bombshell report which claimed that it was the United States Navy that carried out an attack that destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline system is “utterly false.”
These Nord Stream pipelines, which were the main artery that carried natural gas underneath the Baltic Sea from Russia into Germany, have been the crux point of geopolitical strife both before and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Russia chose to stop shipments through the Nord Stream just a month before kicking off the conflict as part of a retaliatory measure against Western Europe, just as Germany chose to block the nearby Nord Stream 2 from starting shipments just a scant few days prior to the inception of the war. Both Denmark and Sweden issued reports highlighting severe damage to the pipelines this past September as copious amounts of natural gas rushed out of the ruptured pipelines to the surface of the Baltic Sea.
As an investigative journalist who is famous for winning a Pulitzer Prize due to exposing the clandestine My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, Seymour Hersh stated in an article which was published this past Wednesday that a group of Navy divers went down to plant remotely triggered explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines during widely publicized training exercises that were carried out this past summer. The report, which was made solely based on the testimony of some currently unnamed source, made the claim that President Joe Biden saw the pipelines as a means through which Russian President Vladimir Putin could make a weapon out of the natural gas supply in his country as a means to fuel his territorial ambitions.
Biden issued the threat just last year that “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2” if Russia chooses to make the choice to cross the border into Ukraine and doubled down to a journalist that “we will be able” to bring an “end” to the entire system. At first, the commander-in-chief chose to waive sanctions against the Russian-owned company responsible for Nord Stream 2, although he brought said sanctions back just before the inception of the invasion.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House, claimed that the idea that the United States would destroy these pipelines was “false and complete fiction,” while Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the CIA, stated that the allegation was “completely and utterly false” when pressed for additional comments by Hersh. A few officials from Europe stated that Russia may have blown up its own pipeline, while a few other put the blame directly on the United States.
