This article appears in the October 21, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
The West, Not Russia, Clearly Responsible for Nord Stream Sabotage
[Print version of this article]
Oct. 15—The United States has put itself right in the center of the sabotage act against Russian-German Pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. Not only did President Joe Biden say, in his now infamous statement Feb. 7: “If Russia invades ... then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” The U.S. Navy in the Summer and Autumn put one of its biggest ships, the flagship carrier USS Kearsarge, squarely in the vicinity of these pipelines, including for most of the month of September.
USS Kearsarge was conducting helicopter activities over the pipelines Sept. 3 and came as close to the Nord Stream 1 gas leaks as 30 km, and 50 km from the Nord Stream 2 leak. This followed its participation in the BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) NATO Baltic Sea military drill operations June 5–17. They included U.S. Marine “Sea Power” military exercises, involving maneuvers near the island of Bornholm, conducting tests for special undersea mine destruction technologies.
On Thursday, Sept. 22, just four days before the sabotage was discovered, the USS Kearsarge, accompanied by the landing ships USS Arlington and USS Gunston Hall, left the Bornholm area, passing through the Fehmarn Belt out of the Baltic Sea towards the Atlantic, according to Fehmarn 24-News.
Clearly, it is NATO who had capacities in place at the pipeline, to place explosives. Clearly, NATO at the same time had capacity to block Russia or any other nations from even coming close to the sites of the detonations.
Strange Swedish Navy Actions
Even without the presence of the U.S. Navy, this part of the Baltic Sea is one of the most supervised sea lanes in the world. Now an almost totally neglected article in a major Swedish medium has proven that the Swedish Navy entered this theater after the U.S. ships had left, and patrolled the area for two days precisely at the sabotage sites, in the days immediately before the explosions.
A map, published Oct. 1 by the leading daily newspaper in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter, revealed that the Swedish Navy visited the Nord Stream pipelines with foreknowledge of the sabotage sites, two days before the explosions on the pipelines. Two Swedish warships first moved directly back and forth to the northern detonation locations, and then the next day between the southern detonation location and the northern ones.
This article has not been mentioned in other Swedish or international media, even though Dagens Nyheter chose to publish it a second time Oct. 5, showing the ships’ additional activities outside the Russian city of Kaliningrad. It is therefore relevant to recount, in detail, the movements of the Swedish warships shown in the map published with the article.
Transponders Off Against Tracking
The waters around the Danish island of Bornholm, as shown on the map (Figure 1), are much closer to Sweden than to Denmark. And the map published by Dagens Nyheter, using public Marine Traffic data, shows the following movements of ships of the Swedish Navy.
The two ships left the main Swedish naval base, Karlskrona, on Sept. 22 at 11:19 a.m. local time, and arrived just after 1:00 p.m. that day in the area to the east-northeast of Bornholm where the second and third explosions were to blow holes in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline four days later. Just at that time, the ships turned off their AIS (Automatic Identification System) transponders and became invisible for tracking on Marine Traffic. Their transponders were both turned back on 22 hours later, Sept. 23 at 11:03 a.m. local time, and revealed the ships were at the same location. They then moved out of the area, due west to the harbor of Simrishamn at the southeastern tip of Sweden, arriving there at 1:42 p.m. Sept. 23 for a short stop.
But the ships then returned to the location of the later double explosion on Nord Stream 1; they were back at it at 6:10 p.m. Sept. 23, when they again turned off their transponders to hide their movements. When the transponders were switched back on again that night at 11:56 p.m., the ships were in the area where the first explosion and gas leak were to occur Sept. 26 on Nord Stream 2, southeast of Bornholm Island.
Finally, the two Swedish Navy ships moved from that southeasterly location, in a big curve around Bornholm Island, back to the northeasterly area where the Nord Stream 1 gas leaks were later detected! There, on Sept. 24 at 12:13 p.m. local time, the ships’ transponders were again turned off.
The first explosion came 38 hours later. But in the meantime, the Swedish Navy ships travelled towards the Russian port city of Kaliningrad, turning their transponders on again Sept. 25 at 2:28 p.m. local time, just outside Kaliningrad. After moving around there and then setting off westward back in the direction of Karlskrona, Sweden and Bornholm Island, the ships turned off their transponders for the last time Sept. 25 at 9:43 p.m. local time, just 4 hours and 20 minutes before the first explosion.
That first explosion, at Nord Stream 2 southeast of Bornholm, went off the following morning, Sept. 26 at 2:03 a.m. local time, according to Swedish seismological data. That evening at 7:04 p.m., two explosions went off almost simultaneously, blowing up the two Nord Stream 1 pipelines at a small distance from each other, but far enough apart to be in the economic zones of Denmark and Sweden respectively. Later, a fourth, much smaller leak on Nord Stream 2 was seen, according to the Dagens Nyheter article.
Sweden at War? and Who Decided?
The Schiller Institute in Sweden, in a statement Oct. 13, said:
The Swedish people have the right to know if the Navy has participated in the act of war against Russia and Germany; if we are at war; and who decided?
The Swedish Navy must know where they got the positions of the detonations, and do not entertain sufficiently close relations to Russia to obtain such information there. Sweden is currently applying for membership in NATO together with Finland and has close military relations with the two major NATO countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, who have shown intent and motive, and have the capacity to direct such an operation.
There is now extreme nervousness in the Swedish government and military. Sweden did not allow Russia to take part in the crime investigations, even though the Russian owner of the pipelines, Gazprom, is the victim of the crime. Even though it was in international waters, Sweden decided to keep everyone else away from the crime scene for two days, while the Swedish Navy’s own rescue ships Belos and Artemis investigated the sea bottom, and it was announced they had removed certain findings. On Sept. 16 the Swedish government took the next extraordinary step, deciding also to exclude Germany and Denmark from its investigation. Swedish prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, leading the Swedish investigation, told Reuters that Sweden rejected collaboration with Denmark and Germany “because there is information in our investigation that is subject to confidentiality directly linked to national security.”
Germany therefore has conducted its own undersea investigation, but only after the Swedish government completed its secretive one.
The journalist responsible for the twice-published Dagens Nyheter article asked for a comment from the Swedish Navy, which stonewalled, referring to security rules. The Oct. 1 article is behind a paywall, as is the Oct. 5 version.
