Germans continue to investigate
Sweden closes investigation into Nord Stream sabotage
February 7, 2024, 11:38 a.m
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Who is behind the Nord Stream pipeline leaks? It is clear to the Swedish public prosecutor’s office: They were not Swedes, which is why they are dropping the investigation – to the Kremlin’s annoyance. However, Germany is continuing to investigate the case and could benefit from the Swedish decision.
The Swedish public prosecutor’s office is closing its investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. It was concluded that there was no Swedish jurisdiction in the case, said prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, who was in charge of the investigation.
The comprehensive investigation found nothing to indicate that Swedes or Swedish citizens were involved in the attack in international waters, Ljungqvist said. The German investigation into the case is continuing, he emphasized. Several German media outlets had already reported on Tuesday that Ljungqvist apparently wanted to stop the proceedings. According to them, the German authorities could benefit from the Swedish move because the Swedes could make their evidence available to them.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced that the German investigation was ongoing. “No further information is currently being provided,” said a spokeswoman in Karlsruhe.
Russia criticized the termination of the investigation into the sabotage of the pipelines. “The decision is significant, and it is significant how it (the investigation) was ended,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian agencies. To date, Russia has not been granted access to the results of the investigation. And now the case is simply being shelved, he criticized. According to Peskov, the German government now has to prove how important it is to clarify the case. “German taxpayers and German companies suffer – companies lose their competitiveness without this gas,” he said.
Several explosions near Bornholm
At the end of September 2022, several explosions were registered near the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm and a little later four leaks were discovered in three of the four lines of the Nord Stream pipelines. Investigations were then started in Sweden, as well as in Germany and Denmark. Investigators quickly came to the conclusion that the detonations were caused by sabotage. It is still unclear who was behind it. The Russian leadership had blamed the secret services from the USA and Great Britain, among others, for the attack.
However, gas no longer flowed through the pipes before the explosion. After the start of its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia gradually throttled deliveries via Nord Stream and stopped them completely at the beginning of September 2022; supposedly due to technical problems. Observers suspected that this was intended to increase pressure on the West, and especially Germany, to withdraw sanctions against Russia that had been imposed because of the war.
In November 2022, Ljungqvist confirmed the suspicion that had been harbored from the beginning that it was serious sabotage. Analyzes showed explosive residues on several foreign bodies, he explained. In a joint letter to the UN Security Council in July 2023, the UN embassies of Germany, Denmark and Sweden wrote that investigators had discovered traces of explosives on a suspicious sailing yacht. There is a suspicion that this was used to transport the explosives used in the sabotage, the letter said. It was discovered that the boat had been rented in the name of a person who had used documents intended to conceal the identity of the real renter.
Question of perpetrator unclear
According to expert assessments, it is possible that trained divers could have planted explosive devices at the locations where the gas pipes were damaged, the letter continued. At the same time, however, it was also emphasized that the question of the perpetrators was unresolved: “At this point in time, it is not possible to reliably clarify the identity of the perpetrators and their motives, especially with regard to the question of whether the incident was caused by a state or a state actor was controlled.”
Nord Stream 1 and 2 each run as an underwater double strand over a distance of around 1,200 kilometers from Russia to Germany. Nord Stream 1 has supplied a significant proportion of the gas imported into Europe since 2011. However, in the course of the confrontation with the West after the Russian attack on Ukraine, Moscow had throttled deliveries before the destruction and then stopped them completely. The newer Nord Stream 2 pipeline was already filled with gas, but was not yet in operation due to a lack of certification.