Not involved in the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines, says Ukraine
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Stockholm: The Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said it had no involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. He said: "This is not our activity".
He was speaking to the media in Stockholm ahead of a meeting with EU defence ministers. Earlier, a report in The New York Times alleged that US officials have an intelligence report hinting that the sabotage was the work of a "pro-Ukrainian group." It also said there was no evidence implicating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The perpetrators were called "opponents of Putin".
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Tuesday tweeted that "Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about 'pro-Ukraine sabotage groups."
The pipeline bombing happened in September 2022 and the consequences worked out in Kyiv's favour by hindering Russia's ability to earn millions via the sale of gas to Western Europe. However, the shortage of supply led to high energy prices in European countries, particularly Germany.
According to German reports, the subsea explosion was carried out by an unidentified group of five men and one woman. They used professionally falsified passports and rented a boat sailing from the northern German port of Rostock.
German defence minister Boris Pistorius on Wednesday told DLF that: "It could just as well be, and this has also been made clear in the reports, that it was a false flag action (operation), in other words, to blame pro-Ukrainian groups and make it look that way, the probability of one or the other is equally high, so we must now wait and see how things develop. It does not help us to think about the impact this would have on our support for Ukraine on the basis of such research, which has undoubtedly been done painstakingly and meticulously."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said no perpetrator had yet been identified. "We have not been able to determine who was behind (the sabotage). There are ongoing national investigations and I think it’s right to wait until those are finalised before we say anything more."
