“Until now, it was believed that saboteurs used only four explosives to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines. In fact, there were at least six of them,” reports the German daily “Die Welt” on Wednesday (27/11/24).
The newspaper refers to court files, including underwater photos showing damage to the installation's pipes. These are documents from the lawsuit that Nord Stream AG brought against the insurer of the gas pipelines, which refuses to pay huge compensation for their destruction.
They wanted to destroy all of them
As we read, the fact that the authors of the attack tried to destroy all the threads of the gas pipeline makes us doubt the thesis that the Russians themselves could have been behind the attack on Nord Stream.
“Die Welt” reports that the authors of the attack on the installation placed at least six bombs near all four pipes of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, causing their destruction or damage to varying degrees.
It turns out that pipe B of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which until now was considered intact as a result of the attack, was also slightly damaged. As we read, there are many indications that this pipe was also supposed to be destroyed, but the operation failed and the pipe remained tight.
According to “Die Welt”, this may undermine the version that the Russians destroyed Nord Stream, but deliberately spared one line so that they could quickly resume gas supplies to Europe if necessary.
Not very logical version
As we read, in the face of the information now revealed, this does not seem logical. It turns out that it was planned to also destroy the B pipe of Nord Stream 2, but it failed.
“This does not mean that the mystery of the Nord Stream attacks has been solved. However, the findings regarding two other bombs show that there are still many unanswered questions when it comes to solving the largest and probably most serious act of sabotage in recent decades,” we read.
The so-called Northern Gas Pipeline consists of two gas pipelines – Nord Stream 1, launched in 2011, and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, built but not put into operation. Each of them consists of two pipes through which gas from Russia was pumped or planned to be pumped to Europe.
Currently, the most probable version is that Ukraine was behind the attacks on Nord Stream. The German prosecutor's office has already issued the first arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen suspected of participating in the attack. However, no one has been arrested yet.
The article comes from the website Deutsche Welle