Nord Stream 2 (NS2)
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Germany put on hold the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project designed to bring Russian natural gas directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea. The move announced on Tuesday marked the most dramatic measure yet to punish Moscow for its recognition of two separatist regions in Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a major shift for Germany’s energy policy, announced 27 February 2022 the construction of two new terminals for liquefied natural gas in response to what some critics said was Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas. The terminals are to be located in Brunsbuttel and Wilhelmshaven in northern Germany, he said.
Germany's ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who worked for oil giants Gazprom and Rosneft, was pressed to disavow the war in Ukraine. His silence caused some of his staff to quit in protest and business partners were distancing themselves. A member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Schröder was the head of Germany's government from 1998 to 2005. Since leaving office, he has parlayed friendships with Moscow's elite, including President Vladimir Putin, into high-profile jobs at Russian oil giants like Gazprom and Rosneft. He was also on the board of Nord Stream 2 AG.
On 23 February 2022 the Biden administration announced plans to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, the company building a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said 22 February 2022 the gas pipeline project cannot go ahead now in these crisis circumstances. The German ministry of economic affairs retracted an analysis in which it rated the pipeline as being important for Germany energy supply security. Without this rating, the Bonn-based Federal Network Agency, Germany's regulatory agency for electricity and gas, cannot certify the pipeline for operation. The ministry "will reassess the security of our supply needs in light of what has taken place" in the past few days, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz added. On the one hand, the chancellor admitted that he was mistaken in December when he said that the pipeline was a "private sector project" and that the relevant authority in Germany was making its decision in a "non-political way." It also allows for a loophole. The words can be interpreted to mean that Germany's supply security can be reassessed at any moment.
On the subject of the contentious Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the stolidly 'Atlanticist’ German Greens saw eye to eye with the US establishment, but not so much with the German chancellor. Whereas Scholz understands the pipeline as a business project, Baerbock demonstratively asserted its geopolitical significance. As Europe’s biggest natural gas consumer, Germany relies on Russia for roughly half of its gas imports, which account for 20 percent of its current energy mix.
Running from Russia's Baltic coast to northeastern Germany, the underwater, 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) pipeline follows the same route as Nord Stream 1, which was completed over a decade ago.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder serves as chairman of the Nord Stream's shareholders committee. Schroeder, a longtime friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has championed the Nord Stream enterprise since just before being voted out of office in 2005. He soon went on to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, a consortium for construction and operation of the undersea pipeline, eventually becoming chairman of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company.
Since at least 2001, US administrations have pushed for Germany to buy American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to overtake a sector of the market long-dominated by Russian distribution routes that run through Ukraine. Poland and Lithuania, who are among Nord Stream 2’s most vociferous European critics, have built LNG terminals that would stand to profit from an American takeover of the market.
In September 2021, Gazprom completed construction of the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) natural gas pipeline, which is an offshore pipeline that runs across the Baltic Sea from the Russian port of Ust-Luga to Greifswald in Germany. NS2 is expected to have a capacity of about 1.9 Bcf per year, identical to the capacity of NS1, and is estimated to have cost around $10 billion. The pipeline is entirely owned by Gazprom via a Swiss-based special purpose entity, but reportedly it received financing for about half of the cost from Engie, OMV, Shell, Uniper, and Wintershall for its construction.
In May 2021, the U.S. government waived sanctions imposed on the project company, its CEO, and corporate officers involved in constructing the NS2 pipeline, which cleared the way for Gazprom to finish constructing the pipeline and begin delivering natural gas to Germany. A State Department report sent to Congress asserted that the project company Nord Stream 2 AG, its CEO Matthias Warnig, four Russian ships, and four other entities engaged in sanctionable activity, but the Secretary of State waived sanctions for Nord Stream 2 AG, its CEO, and staff on the grounds of national interest. Completion of the pipeline enabled Russia to increase its piped natural gas exports to Germany and other EU member states and bypass Ukraine, and so denying Ukraine potential revenue gained from transit fees.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on 22 July 2021 defended a compromise agreement with the United States to permit completion of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to transport fuel from Russia to Germany without the further imposition of American sanctions. She called the pact between Berlin and Washington, “good for Ukraine,” even though the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 line, which is 98% completed, will bypass Ukraine and Poland. Germany and the U.S. said they are committed to blocking any attempt by Moscow to use the new line as a political weapon to control energy supplies to Europe.
Germany and the U.S. agreed to fund alternative energy and development projects in Ukraine and Poland, although both countries voiced their displeasure at the agreement, saying it was not enough to reduce the threat of Russian energy control. The Ukrainian and Polish foreign ministers said in a joint statement that the German-U.S. agreement created a “political, military and energy threat for Ukraine and Central Europe, while increasing Russia’s potential to destabilize the security situation in Europe.”
Yuriy Vitrenko, head of the Ukrainian state-owned energy company Naftogaz, appeared to concur. "If physical flow of [Russian] gas through Ukraine stops, the risk of full-scale military aggression by Russia would go up substantially," Vitrenko said. "Russia will expect nothing much from Europe [beyond] expressions of deep concern if the military actions do not have an impact on European consumers".
A dozen European countries rely on Russia for more than 75 percent of their natural gas needs. This makes U.S. Allies and partners vulnerable to having their gas shut off at Moscow’s whim. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly proven his willingness to use Russia’s gas supply as a weapon, having blocked the flow of gas to neighbors in 2006, 2009, 2014, and in March 2018. EU reliance on Russian gas presents risks for Europe and the West as a whole and makes us all less secure. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will heighten Europe’s susceptibility to Russia’s energy blackmail tactics.
Nord Stream 2 will bring more than just Russian gas. Russian leverage and influence will also flow under the Baltic Sea and into Europe, and the pipeline will enable Moscow to further undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and stability. In exchange, Europe will send billions of euros to Moscow each year, indirectly bankrolling Russian military aggression in places like Ukraine and Syria. It will also fund the Russian troll farms and disinformation factories that target democratic institutions in Europe and the United States. The completion of Nord Stream 2 and the importation of more Russian gas in to Europe would help to finance even greater Russian aggression throughout Europe.
Nord Stream 2 would give Putin a new tool. Russia has already used energy as a lever to achieve its foreign policy objectives. In 2009, Russia cut off energy supplies to Europe. With Nord Stream 2 in place it would have an even more powerful “economic tool” to threaten European economies, and even their national security. Nord Stream is a commercial project with major geo-political overtones. In turbulent times in Washington, Democrats and Republicans are united to oppose Nord Stream 2.
In July 2021 the Biden Administration struck a deal with Germany to allow Russia to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. On 21 August 2021 the Department of State submitted a report to Congress pursuant to the Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act of 2019 (PEESA), as amended. The United States continued opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the U.S. Government’s continued compliance with PEESA, as amended. The Administration has now sanctioned 7 persons and identified 16 of their vessels as blocked property pursuant to PEESA in connection with Nord Stream 2. President Biden also signed an Executive Order that allows the U.S. Government to impose sanctions applicable to PEESA-designated persons without the exception relating to the importation of goods in Section 7503(e)(5) of PEESA, as amended.
Even as the Administration continued to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including via sanctions, it continued to work with Germany and other allies and partners to reduce the risks posed by the pipeline to Ukraine and frontline NATO and EU countries and to push back against harmful Russian activities, including in the energy sphere. US efforts to implement the commitments outlined in the July 21 “Joint Statement of the United States and Germany on Support for Ukraine, European Energy Security, and our Climate Goals” were being led by State Department Senior Advisor for Energy Security Amos Hochstein, who was appointed on 10 August 2021.
Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported US Navy divers had planted bombs on the pipeline during drills the previous summer, following months of heated debate about the wisdom of doing so within the US national security community. The article states that the United States decided to sabotage the pipelines following more than nine months of highly secret debate inside the US national security community.
"Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning," Hersh wrote in his Substack newsletter. The article also says that the alleged decision to sabotage the pipelines followed more than nine months of highly secret debate inside US national security community.
The blasts occurred on September 26 at three of the four strings of Nord Stream 1 and 2 underwater pipelines built to carry a combined 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe annually. The incident halted gas deliveries to Germany ahead of the cold season, prompting a gas price hike. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched separate investigations into the suspected sabotage, with German media reporting trust issues among the three EU nations.
Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload file-sharing website, tweeted that Truss had ostensibly used her iPhone to send a message to Blinken saying "It’s done" just minutes after the pipeline explosion. According to the entrepreneur, the text Truss sent is well known to the intelligence service of Russia and is the reason Moscow believes that the United Kingdom was involved in the bombing attack.
The Russian chief prosecutor's office said it had opened an inquiry into possible international terrorism. As Denmark and Sweden barred Russia from investigating the incidents, the Russian Foreign Ministry made clear that the investigation can only be considered reliable and objective if Moscow participates in it. After a month-long investigation, the Russian Ministry of Defense revealed in late October that Britain’s Royal Navy took part in the planning, organization and execution of the Nord Stream attack.
German investigators were studying the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline did not exclude the possibility that the explosion could have been carried out by a Western state in order to scapegoat Russia. The White House dismissed Hersh’s report as "false and complete fiction,” and the article was published on the newsletter site Substack, rather than in any major newspaper.
The US government and corporate media have long ignored Hersh’s pioneering work, including his 1970 reporting on the My Lai massacre by US soldiers during the Vietnam War, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He later played a key role in exposing the CIA’s many secret activities in other countries, leading to congressional investigations and reforms of the agency. He was later hired by the New York Times in 1972 and wrote for them for several years. When asked about the Times article on Tuesday, the journalist laughed and refused to comment, only telling Sputnik: “well, I’m just looking at it. Gee, the sources aren’t named … I’ve got nothing to say.” Hersh rejected the Times’ account as part of a “cover-up” staged by US intelligence agencies, as the outlet has largely cited unnamed intelligence officials to support its story.
Facebook users who try to share the URL from Hersh's story receive the following message: "Before you share this content, you might want to know that there's additional reporting from Faktisk. Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways." It also includes a link to the month-old article by Faktisk.no, a Norwegian "fact-checking" website produced in cooperation with Norwegian mass media and NRK, Norway's state broadcasting company.
In an article on substack.com on 23 April 2023, author Michael Shellenberger wrote that "instead of allowing people to make up their own minds, Facebook has decided to take a side". "And instead of explaining, Facebook sends readers to an article in Norwegian. In other words, Facebook has decided that a Norwegian journalist is right and Hersh is wrong. And maybe Hersh is wrong. Maybe the Norwegian journalist is right," wrote Shellenberger. "Whatever the case, it should not be up to Facebook to decide. It's a debate that should proceed without Facebook's intervention."
New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group, likely comprised of Ukrainian or Russian nationals, carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, but the intelligence reached no firm conclusions, The New York Times reported on 07 March 2023. There was no evidence that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or other Ukrainian government officials were behind the explosions, the newspaper reported. A senior Zelenskiy aide said Kyiv was "absolutely not involved" and had no information about what happened.
Donald Trump dismissed claims that Russia was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, but said that speculating on the true perpetrator might “get our country in trouble.” Speaking to Fox’s Tucker Carlson , Trump was asked for his thoughts about who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. “I don’t want to get our country in trouble so I won’t answer it. But I can tell you who it wasn’t, was Russia. How about when they blamed Russia. They said ‘Russia blew up their own pipeline.’ You got a kick out of that one, too. It wasn’t Russia,” he told the Fox News pundit.
Three Russian navy ships were observed in the Baltic Sea in the area of the Nord Stream pipeline blasts prior to the sabotage that halted Russian gas flows to Europe in September last year, an investigation by four Nordic broadcasters has found. The Russian navy ships were traced using satellite images and intercepted radio communication from the Russian fleet, the four broadcasters, Denmark's DR, Norway's NRK, Sweden's SVT and Finland's Yle, said.
Four days before the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, a patrol boat from the Danish defense took 112 photos of Russian vessels in the area where the explosion took place. It comes to light after Information gained access to documents at the Defense Command. The Danish Defense Command confirms the sighting of the ship with an AS-26 Priz mini-submarine on board.
The Russian naval ships that were in the vicinity of the gas pipelines were sailing without an active position signal. This means that position and speed cannot be followed by others. But DR, NRK, SVT and Yle obtained radio messages that have been intercepted from the ships. These messages have been sent to Russian military naval bases, and they reveal the sailing routes: The ships sailed three times in June and September last year from Russia to the area where it later exploded near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea.
Here the ships stayed for several hours. In one case for almost a day. They then sailed back to their naval bases in Russia. The Russian ships' sailing routes and stays near the later Nord Stream explosion sites are supported by satellite images which the four media analysed in collaboration with the Norwegian satellite companies Vake and KSAT.
The Russian SS-750 special craft, which has a mini-submarine on board, was photographed near the place where the Nord Stream pipes were sabotaged, the Defense Command confirme April 2023. The Russian special vessel SS-750 was near the Nord Stream pipes four days before the pipes were blown up on 26 September 2022 last year. The special vessel is designed to carry out operations under the sea and has a mini submarine of the AS-26 Priz type on board. The German media T-Online and the open source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander had previously described that the special vessel SS-750 was one of a total of six Russian naval vessels that may have been in the area in the days leading up to the blasting of the pipelines.
After the revelations that Russian naval ships were near the Nord Stream gas pipelines three times before the explosions in the pipelines, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes on Twitter: "That a new version about Russia's alleged involvement in the attack on Nord Stream has emerged in the Western media is a part of a Western disinformation campaign. It aims to ensure that it never becomes clear who is really behind this international act of terrorism".
Researcher Cecilie Hellestveit believes that the attacks on the gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea are carefully planned to create as much disagreement as possible among the countries that support Ukraine. Hellestveit is a conflict and international law researcher at the Institute of International Law. She also says it is very likely, but difficult to prove, that Russia is behind it: " It is very likely that a state power is behind it. It is very likely that it has a connection to Ukraine. And it is very likely that the aim of the attack is to influence the attitudes of Western countries".
"These are countries that may have slightly different points of view on how to relate to Russia. Some believe that you should have an extremely strict line, while others believe that you should lower the tension level. Thus the attack brings the division to light.... But what we have often seen is that these attacks come at specific times. They are often timed to decisions and political processes to have maximum effect. What is happening these days is that the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase."
HI Sutton, who is an independent naval analyst and expert on Russia's underwater warfare program, also says the findings are interesting. "This is information that paints a convincing picture of covert Russian activity near the gas pipelines in the time leading up to the attacks", says Sutton.
German magazine Der Spiegel has published a lengthy and detailed investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. It cites German investigators – who are undertaking “the most important investigation of Germany’s postwar history because of its potential political implications” – and reported that “a striking number of clues point to Ukraine”.
“According to Der Spiegel’s sources, investigators are certain that the saboteurs were in Ukraine before and after the attack. Indeed, the overall picture formed by the puzzles pieces of technical information has grown quite clear.
And the possible motives also seem clear to international security circles: The aim, they says, was to deprive Moscow of an important source of revenue for financing the war against Ukraine. And at the same time to deprive Putin once and for all of his most important instrument of blackmail against the German government.”
New "proof" of Ukrainian involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream I and II natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was published by the Washington Post and German magazine Der Spiegel on 11 November 2023. The two publications claimed to have identified the Ukrainian "mastermind" behind the explosive operation. Roman Chervinsky, a veteran Ukrainian spy, is alleged to have "coordinated" the team of six saboteurs suspected of setting off explosive charges near the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022, several sources – "both Ukrainian and among the international teams of security experts connected to this case" – told the two publications, according to Der Spiegel.
This 48-year-old expert in "clandestine actions" was a controversial figure even before his name came up in the pipeline affair. Chervinsky has been in pre-trial detention in Kyiv since April 2023, awaiting trial for his involvement in a high-risk operation that ended in disaster for Ukraine’s intelligence services.
Chervinsky is accused of having attempted to recruit a Russian pilot in the summer of 2022 amid a broader campaign to lure potential defectors. It soon became clear that the pilot remained only too loyal to Moscow. Instead of flying to Ukraine as promised, he apparently provided the coordinates of a military airport to the Russians, who wasted no time in bombing it. At that time, Chervinsky had joined the Ukrainian army's 'special forces', specialists in intelligence and sabotage operations.
This failure pushed the Ukrainian authorities to distance themselves from their spy, claiming that he had gone off on his own and exceeded his prerogatives. Since then, Chervinsky has been seen by some Ukrainians as a “risk-taker” who endangers national security. His defenders, however, hail him as a “great patriot” who pulled off one of the Ukraininan intelligence services’ greatest coups in 2019 after he had succeeded in capturing a “Russian witness” supposedly in possession of evidence showing Russian involvement in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in the skies over the Donbas in 2014.
When contacted for comment by the Washington Post and Der Spiegel, Chervinsky, speaking through his lawyers, accused “Russian propaganda” of trying to frame him for the Nord Stream sabotage. Kyiv, for its part, refused to comment on the “revelations” published by the two Western media outlets. These new developments are a reminder that behind the trench warfare taking place in Ukraine, a shadow war is also being fought between the countries’ intelligence services.
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