Times: West knows the name of a possible “sponsor” of sabotage at Nord Stream

In the West, a week after the Nord Stream gas pipelines were blown up, it was known that it was not Russia or the United States that were behind the sabotage, but a private Ukrainian enterprise, the British newspaper The Times reported.

“A week after the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion, members of the Scandinavian delegation in Brussels left the embassy’s intelligence briefing, impressed by the level of detail they received shortly after the attack,” the article says.

According to the Times, the sabotage on the gas pipelines involved “not Americans, Russians or Poles,” as intelligence reported, but a private enterprise from Ukraine.

“They (staff) were told that this would not be made public and told to dodge any questions about why the official investigation into the destruction of the Russian-German pipeline was moving so slowly,” the newspaper notes.

The article also says that the name of the alleged private “sponsor” of the sabotage, who is Ukrainian, has been “circulating in intelligence circles” for several months, but was not disclosed. This person is allegedly not connected with the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Times adds.

Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov earlier today called publications about explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines a coordinated stuffing in the media. On March 7, the NYT newspaper, citing US officials, reported that new intelligence indicates the involvement of some pro-Ukrainian group in the attack on Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. At the same time, the newspaper wrote, the United States has no evidence that Zelensky or any of the Ukrainian officials were involved in the sabotage. It is also emphasized that the United States has no data on Russia’s participation in the operation. Later, the German newspaper Zeit reported that the German investigation had identified a vessel that could have been involved in sabotage. According to the publication, traces also lead to Ukraine.

Prior to this, an investigation into the pipeline incident was published by American journalist Seymour Hersh. He claimed that the United States and Norway were involved in the undermining. The US and the EU called Hersh’s information unreliable, to which the Kremlin announced the unwillingness of Western countries to transparently investigate this case.

Earlier, the Russian authorities have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that Russia is not allowed to participate in the investigation of the incident at Nord Stream. At the same time, Western countries are not conducting a full-fledged investigation into this incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2022.