The hand of fear has fallen on a number of possible suspects in the two years since provocateurs planted bombs on Nord Stream 1 and 2– the gas pipes that spanned the Baltic Sea to link Russia to Germany.
Soon after the September 26, 2022, fire, many Western authorities blamed Russia. The idea was that Moscow blew up the pipelines as part of its “hybrid war” strategy, showing a willingness and ability to strike crucial system, or as a “false flag” activity to slander Ukraine.
Since therefore, journalists and critics have suggested a range of criminals, including President Joe Biden and the CIA, Ukraine and Poland.
Finnish and Norwegian knowledge studies ended in February 2024 without identifying the saboteurs, which did much to dispel conspiracy ideas.
Finally, in August 2024, it was reported in European press that prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian swimming professor who lived in Poland as part of the ongoing European research.
The claim of official complicity has been deemed “absolute nonsense” by Kyiv. Meanwhile, Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and the minister of digital affairs, suggested that the German findings were “inspired by Moscow” and intended to cause a rift among NATO countries.
Nonetheless, the German report has helped shift the consensus framing of the incident toward the blast being an international crime against majority-Russian-owned civilian infrastructure.
And this is a sure win for Russia. Cementing Russia’s narrative, rather than establishing the truth, may have always been the point for Moscow.
Observers of post-Soviet geopolitics and President Vladimir Putin’s tactics can also examine Russia’s motivations to frame the attack as a deliberate criminal act while investigators look for the reasons, means, and opportunity for the sabotage itself.
The Nord Stream case serves as a reminder of how effectively the Kremlin uses disinformation and manipulation to spread its narratives, frequently sowing dissent in the West and obstructing Russia’s actual crimes elsewhere.
Even when, as appears to be the case right now with the Nord Stream blasts, the forensic evidence assembled so far supports Russia’s preferred narrative, this is true.
Nord Stream in context
The Nord Stream explosions occurred seven months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By that point, Putin was shifting his focus away from a protracted military underbelly and beginning a long attrition war.
His military had already inflicted almost 15, 000 civilian casualties, and September 2022 saw the start of sustained attacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, including dams, railways, hospitals, schools and the energy grid.
The Nord Stream pipelines, which were built and run by a consortium led by Gazprom, gave Russia more control over how much natural gas is sold and how much it is pumped.
For this reason, Putin’s adversaries, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during the construction of Nord Stream 2 in 2021 viewed the pipeline as a dangerous geopolitical weapon.
With the completion of Nord Stream 2, Russia’s gas supply to Europe, which is largely dependent on Russia for its natural gas needs, could largely bypass Ukraine and eliminate the need to pay transit fees to both Ukraine and Poland.
In consequence, Ukraine was fervently interested in halting the flow of gas through the Nord Stream pipelines. So, too, did Russia’s competitors in the European energy market, including Norway and the United States. The same concern was felt by German political parties opposing the transition of energy to renewable and sustainable sources.
Despite being completed, Nord Stream 2 was not in use when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, having been blocked by German energy regulators. Additionally, Russia shut down Nord Stream 1, which had begun to operate in 2012, for an indefinite period of time in 2022.
More than a mystery
As a result, Western analysts did n’t make such a leap when they claimed that Russia had ruined its own now-defunct pipeline to show that it was ready and able to attack undersea infrastructure.
However, as time went on, stories that treated the sabotage as a real-life whodunit mystery with an emphasis on figuring out the means and motives dominated this view. Investigative journalists and other analysts compared the public record to leaks from alleged whistleblowers, geospatial data, financial data, and even reenactments of the attack in an effort to crack the case.
Some, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, traced responsibility all the way to the CIA and the Oval Office.
Most US media chose not to echo Hersh’s claims, and the White House has consistently rejected them. This is because they were unable to support Hersh’s story.
Hersh’s theory includes the idea that powerful Western interests pressed on investigators and provided false information to the media.
This second-order speculation – claiming that the original crime has been compounded by a cover-up – has long been promoted by Russia, too. After Sweden and Denmark halted their investigations, Moscow’s representative to the United Nations Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya, called for the UN to take over the investigation, saying:” It is as if a crime was committed — a murder — and a year later, the investigative authorities concluded that the victim was murdered“.
Russian disinformation
Since then, Russia has accused German prosecutors of planning to wrap up the investigation without naming the culprits.
This framing has a clear appeal to Moscow. First, it fits Putin’s argument that NATO is constantly scheming against Russia. Second, it offers the assurance that Russia will pay the costs of the Nord Stream sabotage from insurance companies. Insurance companies have so far declined to pay out, citing official evidence that the sabotage was” an act of war.”
Moscow, in its relentless pursuit of proof of NATO and US complicity, is n’t likely to be satisfied by the German investigation’s single arrest warrant. Russia wants to put the US in the dock, too.
After all, President Joe Biden did threaten NATO action to halt Nord Stream very early in 2022. And Moscow responded to the German warrant for a Ukrainian’s arrest by backtracking about its claim that the US had ordered the attack.
Russia could draw on the words of well-known US figures like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have repeatedly dissented from confirmed Russian propaganda outlets.
After the Nord Stream blasts, both Greene and Carlson were quick to assert that Russia was not responsible and, by implication, that the U. S. may have had a role.
Truth is n’t the goal
The UN Human Rights Council notes that keeping the “mystery” of the Nord Stream alive diverts attention from Russia’s documented crimes against civilians in Ukraine, including those that include attacks on civilian infrastructure and showing “disregard for fundamental principles of humanitarian law and its human rights obligations.”
Russia has leaned on its extensive means of disinformation and propaganda to advance its narrative in the years since the Nord Stream explosion. In this, Russia has form.
In January 2022, US government sources claimed that Russia was planning attacks on pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine and that Kiev was being used to justify the invasion. Similarly, analysts have cited the supposed May 2023 Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow as an example of Soviet-style “false flag” operations.
German security personnel are now beginning to suspect that the evidence trail leading to Ukraine was fabricated in relation to Nord Stream by Russian operatives.
The Nord Stream case has attracted its fair share of speculators over the past two years, a period in which Russia has spearheaded a broad campaign to sew deliberate lies and disinformation. Putin has consistently broken international law during that time.
Russia’s narrative on Nord Stream may well, when all the investigations are said and done, be the dominant one. What is clear is that Putin’s accusations against Ukraine and the United States are motivated by a desire to disrupt and distract rather than by a commitment to justice. Truth is not his goal but, rather, a target.
At Arizona State University, Keith Brown is a professor of politics and global studies.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.