Regardless of whether Seymour Hersh’s account or the far less believable New York Times’ account of the Nordstream pipeline sabotage is correct, the implications for Europe, Ukraine, and the U.S. are dire. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:
In September 2022, the Nord Stream gas pipelines exploded in one of the most spectacular political and environmental acts of terrorism in history.
In the days immediately following the attack, which cut Germany and Europe off from its gas supply and released enormous amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere, the West immediately pronounced judgement against Russia. “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage,” said a senior European environmental official. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm immediately said that it “seems” Russia is to blame.
But investigations by Sweden, Denmark and Germany, countries close to the explosion site, were slow to report and unable to arrive at conclusions. Then, on December 21, 2022, The Washington Post reported that, after months of investigation, there is nothing to suggest that Russia was responsible. The Post article interviewed “23 diplomatic and intelligence officials in nine countries” who said that “[t]here is no evidence at this point that Russia was behind the sabotage.” It reports that “even those with inside knowledge of the forensic details don’t conclusively tie Russia to the attack.” The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a “growing sense among investigators in the U.S. and Europe that neither Russian-government nor pro-Russian operatives were behind the sabotage.”
But if Russia didn’t do it, then one of us did.
