Lee Heidhues 6.6.2023
The Biden Administration is in a tough position.
The Washington Post reports that the US government has sufficient documentation to point the finger at Ukraine for the September 2022 Nordstream 2 pipeline explosion hundreds of feet beneath the Baltic Sea.
An explosion which severely damaged the Russian built pipeline which was to have carried natural gas from Russia to Germany.
For nearly nine months the party responsible has not been conclusively named. Even today’s Washington Post story is receiving a healthy dose of skepticism and pushback.
If Ukraine is responsible the optics will not be positive. Particularly since the Biden administration has discouraged these aggressive actions by the Kyiv government as it pushes to gain funding for its ongoing defense of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Excerpted from The New York Times 6.6.2023
U.S. intelligence agencies learned from a European ally that the Ukrainian military had planned an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, three months before saboteurs bombed the underwater network, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The Post withheld some details of the intelligence, including the name of the European country giving the report to the United States, to protect the sources of the information.
American officials had previously told The New York Times that they believed pro-Ukrainian groups were responsible for the Nord Stream attack. More recently, American officials have said that groups loosely directed by Ukraine’s government were responsible for a series of covert attacks, including on the Nord Stream pipelines.
But an intelligence summary posted on a Discord server and obtained by The Washington Post showed that U.S. and European allies had reason to believe even before the September attacks that Ukraine viewed the pipelines as a tempting sabotage target — and had specific details about a planned operation using divers and deepwater equipment.
The C.I.A. shared the European intelligence report with Germany and other countries last June, The Post reported. When warning Germany, officials said, nothing was held back from what the U.S. government knew.
While some U.S. officials are becoming more comfortable with Ukraine’s covert attacks on Russia, concerns remain about the possibility of miscalculation by Ukraine while conducting such operations. Sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines was exactly the kind of operation that would concern the United States — a symbolic attack with little military value that carries a high risk of fracturing the alliance supporting Ukraine.
So far, that has not happened. Even as Germany and other European countries have learned of Ukrainian involvement in the pipeline attack, they have nevertheless increased their military aid.
American officials insisted on Tuesday there has been no determination about who within the Ukrainian government may have planned or authorized the attack. If it is eventually pinned on senior officials, European attitudes about support for Ukraine could change.
Top photo – Detailed map of the Nordstream 2 pipeline. Mired in controversy deep beneath the Baltic Sea.
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