German prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man they believe was involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, which connect Russia and Germany.
The man, who was identified by the media as 44-year-old Volodymyr Zhuravlov, is a professional diver who was last seen in Poland, but Polish prosecutors have said the suspect has already left the country, making it unclear if he will actually be arrested.
The Nord Stream pipelines were bombed in September 2022. At the time, many Western journalists and officials were quick to blame Russia even though it didn’t make sense for Moscow to bomb its own pipelines.
In 2023, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report that alleged the pipelines were bombed under the direction of President Biden. According to Hersh’s account, US Navy divers planted explosives on the pipelines during NATO exercises in the Baltic Sea in July 2022, and they were detonated by a Norwegian spy plane a few months later.
As evidence that the US had the motive for the attack, Hersh’s report pointed to threats from President Biden and former State Department official Victoria Nuland that the US would take action against Nord Stream if Russia invaded Ukraine. After the sabotage, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the destruction of the pipelines a “tremendous opportunity” to get Europe off of Russian gas.
Hersh’s report that the US was behind the bombing has not been confirmed by other sources, and Western officials later began telling media outlets that Ukraine might have been responsible. The leading theory is that a small number of Ukrainians rented a sailboat in Poland from where they carried out the attack, which would have required a large amount of explosives.
The Washington Post reported in November 2023 that a jailed Ukrainian official, Col. Roman Chervinsky, coordinated the attack on the pipelines and that he ultimately answered to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief. But that report has also not been confirmed, and Chervinsky, who was jailed for an unrelated case, denied involvement in the Nord Stream bombings.
Source: AntiWar.
