Two years on, still more questions than answers about pipeline sabotage
Theories, speculation and rumour have surrounded the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines since they were blown up in 2022. If, as seems very likely, the trail does not lead back to Moscow, then where does it lead?
Sabotage: gas bubbles from one of the leaking Nord Stream pipelines off Sweden, Baltic Sea, 30 September 2022
Swedish coast guard handout · Anadolu · Getty
On 26 September 2022 four explosions shook the seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm. For several days, huge quantities of methane pumped into the Baltic from three damaged sections of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which connected Russia to Germany. Europe quickly felt the impact, with energy prices rising sharply, particularly in Germany. Nord Stream, which cost more than €10bn to build, was not exclusively owned by Russia’s Gazprom; it also had shareholders in Germany (E.ON and Wintershall), the Netherlands (Gasunie) and France (Engie), all entitled to seek compensation.
The pipeline attack was the largest act of sabotage in recent European history as well as an environmental disaster. But in spite of its scope and significance, two years on, official investigations have been marked by a notable lack of urgency. To date, there have been no arrests, and no interrogations of, or charges against, suspects.
In early June, German prosecutors issued a European arrest warrant for Volodymyr Zhuravlov, a Ukrainian citizen resident in Poland. But Warsaw’s unwillingness to provide administrative assistance enabled Zhuravlov to escape without even being interviewed. Showing uncharacteristic casualness about counterterrorism, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk, darling of European liberals, took the German authorities to task on 17 August on X: ‘To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.’
Soon after the explosions, the Swedish and Danish authorities took the view that only a state actor could have pulled off such an attack, but later they unexpectedly closed their investigations without publishing any results. Immediately after the attack, the US also announced it was launching investigations, which seemed particularly promising as their intelligence services have comprehensive oversight of the Baltic. Yet they too have divulged no findings.
At the same (...)
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Fabian Scheidler
Fabian Scheidler is a journalist and the author of The End of the Megamachine: a Brief History of a Failing Civilization, Zer0 Books, 2020.
Translated by George Miller
(2) ‘Eine verminte Recherche – Wer sprengte die Nord-Stream-Pipelines?’ (A hazardous investigation – Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?), round-table discussion at Netzwerk Recherche, Hamburg, 16 June 2023, recorded by TideTV.
(3) Bojan Pancevski, Drew Hinshaw, Joe Parkinson and Warren P Strobel, ‘US warned Ukraine not to attack Nord Stream’, The Wall Street Journal, 14 June 2023, and Shane Harris, John Hudson, Missy Ryan and Michael Birnbaum, ‘No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack’, The Washington Post, 21 December 2022.
(8) ‘Erster Haftbefehl wegen Nord-Stream-Anschlägen’ (First arrest warrants for Nord Stream attacks), Tagesschau, 14 August 2024.
(10) ‘Intercepted: The biggest whodunnit of the century’, The Intercept, 17 May 2023, and James Bamford, ‘The Nord Stream explosions: New revelations about motive, means, and opportunity’, The Nation, New York, 5 May 2023.
(13) High Court of Justice, London, Amended Defence, 30 September 2024.