Two years after saboteurs planted explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines that cross the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany, suspicions are falling on more and more perpetrators.
Immediately after the explosion on September 26, 2022, many Western experts blamed Russia. The theory is that Moscow blew up the pipeline as part of a “hybrid warfare” approach to demonstrate its willingness and capability to attack critical infrastructure, or as part of a “false flag” operation to smear Ukraine.
Since then, journalists and commentators have pointed the finger at a range of culprits, including President Joe Biden, the CIA, Ukraine and Poland.
An investigation by Swedish and Danish intelligence agencies ended in February 2024 without identifying any saboteurs, and did little to quell the conspiracy theories.
Then, in August 2024, German media reported that prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor living in Poland as part of an ongoing German investigation.
Kiev has denied its officials' claims of collusion as “complete nonsense,” while Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski suggested the German findings were “inspired by Moscow” and intended to sow rifts between NATO countries.
Nevertheless, the German report helped shift the consensus on the incident towards the explosion being an international crime against civilian infrastructure majority-owned by Russians.
This is a clear victory for Russia. It may have always been more important to Moscow to shore up its claims than to uncover the truth.
While investigators are pursuing the motives, means, and opportunity for the act of vandalism itself, observers of post-Soviet geopolitics and President Vladimir Putin's tactics, such as myself, can similarly examine Russia's motivations for positioning the attack as an intentional criminal act.
And here, the Nord Stream saga is a reminder of how effectively the Kremlin uses disinformation and manipulation to push its own claims, often to sow dissent in the West and distract attention from the crimes Russia is actually committing elsewhere.
This is true even when the forensic evidence gathered so far is consistent with Russia's preferred narrative, as is currently the case with the Nord Stream explosion.
Current status of Nord Stream
The Nord Stream explosion came seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, by which time the Kremlin's military offensive had stalled and Putin was rethinking his strategy to a long, attritional war.
Ukrainian forces have already suffered around 15,000 civilian casualties, and in September 2022, sustained attacks began on Ukraine's critical infrastructure, including dams, railways, hospitals, schools and the power grid.
The Nord Stream pipeline was built and operated by a consortium led by majority-nationalized Gazprom, expanding Russia's energy weaponization capabilities by controlling the price and flow of natural gas.
For this reason, during the construction of Nord Stream 2 in 2021, Putin's opponents, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, viewed the pipeline as a dangerous geopolitical weapon.
The completion of Nord Stream 2 means that Russian natural gas shipments to Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian natural gas demand, will be able to largely bypass Ukraine and will no longer have to pay transit fees to both Ukraine and Poland.
Ukraine therefore had a clear interest in stopping the flow of gas through the Nord Stream pipeline, as did Russia's competitors in the European energy market, such as Norway and the United States, and one could argue that German parties advocating an energy transition to sustainable and renewable sources had a similar interest in stopping the flow of gas.
Nord Stream 2 was completed but was blocked by German energy regulators and was not in use when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, while Nord Stream 1, which began operations in 2012, was shut down indefinitely by Russia in August 2022.
More than a mystery
So it wasn't so bold for Western analysts to accuse Russia of destroying its now-useless pipeline to demonstrate its willingness and capability to attack undersea infrastructure.
Over time, however, this perspective was replaced by coverage that treated the sabotage as a real mystery, with an emphasis on uncovering motives and methods. Investigative reporters and other analysts have studied public record statements, leaks from alleged whistleblowers, geospatial data, financial records, and even reconstructions of the attacks in an attempt to unravel the events.
Some, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, have argued that responsibility can be traced back to the CIA and the Oval Office.
Because Hersh's story cannot be corroborated, most U.S. media outlets have refused to repeat his claims, and the White House has consistently denied the allegations.
Hersh's views include the belief that powerful Western interests pressured investigators and leaked information to the media to hide the truth.
Russia has also long promoted this secondary speculation – that an original crime was compounded by a cover-up. After Sweden and Denmark dropped their investigations, Moscow's representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzia, called for the UN to take over the investigation, saying, “It is as if a crime – a murder – had occurred and, a year later, investigators concluded that the victim had been murdered.”
Russian disinformation
Russia later accused German prosecutors of trying to close the investigation without identifying those responsible.
The appeal of this framework to Moscow is clear: first, it fits with Putin’s claims that NATO is constantly plotting against Russia, and second, it gives Russia a commitment to recover the costs of Nord Stream sabotage from insurance companies, which have so far refused to pay, citing official findings that sabotage would be an “act of war.”
Moscow, which is relentless in its pursuit of evidence of NATO-US collusion, will not be satisfied with a single arrest warrant from German investigators: It also wants to take the US to court.
After all, President Joe Biden has warned of NATO action to shut down Nord Stream in early 2022. And Moscow responded to a German warrant seeking the arrest of Ukrainians by stepping up accusations that the US had ordered the attack.
Here Russia may be able to rely on the voices of prominent US figures such as Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has repeatedly spread disinformation from well-documented Russian propaganda outlets, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who praised the quality of life in Moscow in a much-criticised interview with Putin.
After the Nord Stream explosion, both Greene and Carlson were quick to argue that Russia was not to blame and, by implication, that the United States may have also played a role.
Truth is not the goal
Keeping the Nord Stream “mystery” alive distracts attention from Russia’s documented crimes in Ukraine, including attacks on civilian infrastructure and, according to the UN Human Rights Council, demonstrating “disregard for fundamental principles of humanitarian law and human rights obligations.”
Since the Nord Stream explosion, Russia has used its extensive capabilities of disinformation and propaganda to push its case, and it has a proven track record in this regard.
In January 2022, U.S. government sources reported that Russia was launching attacks against pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine and blaming Kiev to justify an invasion. Similarly, analysts have cited a May 2023 drone attack allegedly carried out by Ukraine against Moscow as an example of a Soviet-style “false flag” operation.
This track record has led German security officials to suspect that the trail of evidence linking Nord Stream to Ukraine may have been fabricated by Russian agents.
Speculation is fascinating, and the Nord Stream story has attracted a great deal of speculation over the past two years, a period during which Russia has waged an extensive campaign of deliberate lies and disinformation, and during which Putin has persistently violated international law.
Russia's view on Nord Stream will likely prevail after all investigations are complete. But what is clear is that Putin's accusations against Ukraine and the United States come not from a commitment to justice but from a motivation to confuse and distract. Truth is not his goal, but rather his target.
Keith Brown is professor of political science and international studies at Arizona State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
