U.S. officials say new intelligence information suggests a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, according to The New York Times.
The officials told the Times there’s no indication that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation or that any of those responsible acted at the direction of the Ukrainian government. Mystery has swirled between Washington, London, Kyiv to Moscow on who might have been responsible for explosions along the pipelines designed to carry Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects have long been condemned by the West as national security threats in allowing Moscow to sell gas more easily to Europe.
Asked whether there are indications that a pro-Ukrainian group sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines last summer, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Tuesday, “Several of our European partners — in fact three off them: Germany, Sweden and Denmark — have already opened investigations into what happened with the Nord Stream II Pipeline and those investigations are not closed. They are still hard at work on that. So, I’m just not going to get ahead of that investigative work and I would have to refer you to each of those European countries to comment on their investigations.”
