Warned of Nord Stream sabotage ?: Already in June 2022 a topic for the secret service

In this case, the federal government refuses to testify. Steffen Hebestreit, spokesman for Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), pointed out in the federal press conference on Wednesday that he generally does not provide information on intelligence findings and thus also not on the latest article in the Washington Post about the attacks on the Nord Stream Pipelines last fall.

Should the reporting prove to be correct, that would be extremely tricky for those responsible in Berlin. Referring to one of the numerous US secret documents leaked in the spring, the American newspaper wrote that the Central Intelligence Agency already knew about an imminent act of sabotage at the beginning of June last year and thus three months before the three underwater explosions on September 26th – and before that the German one too side should have warned. The original plans for the attack were therefore to be implemented in the same month and in the shadow of the large NATO naval maneuver Baltops in the Baltic Sea.

The information that a small Ukrainian team of divers had been commissioned directly by the military commander-in-chief in Kiev came from a European intelligence service, which in turn is said to have based itself on the statements of a Ukrainian individual. According to the “Washington Post”, this knowledge was also passed on to the Federal Intelligence Service, which in turn would also have informed the Parliamentary Control Committee of the Bundestag.

When parliamentarians receive information about impending attacks, they take immediate action.

SPD MP Ralf Stegner indirectly rejects the claim that the Bundestag was specifically informed.

This is only partially confirmed in German security circles. A source told the Tagesspiegel that last June there was actually a rather general warning from the Americans that the Nord Stream pipeline could be at risk – but without any indication of a possible Ukrainian perpetrator. Another insider familiar with the process admitted somewhat nebulously that the gas pipeline had been an issue in secret service circles a year ago, but not in the context mentioned by the US newspaper.

“If parliamentarians receive information about impending attacks, they take immediate action,” said Ralf Stegner, SPD member of the Bundestag and a member of the secret service control committee. He indirectly denies that such concrete information was available that would then have been insufficiently considered or even ignored.

Noticeable overlaps

Nonetheless, the latest report is one of a number of other recent publications that have also pointed in the direction of Ukrainian perpetrators. The first report with this focus was published shortly before Chancellor Scholz’s visit to US President Joe Biden in early March. Therefore, speculation continues that American services only want to distract from their own responsibility with this information, which in turn was reported by the former star reporter Seymour Hersh.

However, there are noticeable overlaps between the new findings of the “Post” and the focus of the German investigations, which are being conducted by the Federal Public Prosecutor in Karlsruhe. So far, the focus has been on the 15-meter-long sailing yacht “Andromeda”, which was borrowed from a boat rental company with forged passports at the beginning of September and then set sail from Rostock – the Federal Criminal Police Office later found traces of explosives on board.

Investigators have linked at least one of the passports to a young Ukrainian. A house search took place at the end of May in Frankfurt/Oder at the former partner of a suspect, apparently in order to get DNA traces and to be able to prove that she was on the boat. According to the Washington Post, the secret service knew that “six Ukrainian special forces with forged documents want to rent a boat and then use a submersible to get to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.”

However, Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU), the deputy chairman of the parliamentary control committee, said: “Hasty conclusions are still out of the question: “The suspicion that it could have been Russia has not yet been dispelled. Why doesn’t the state-owned company Rosgvardia share the information about the ship’s movements that the fiber optic cables in the pipeline have given you?” His SPD colleague also does not want to commit himself. “Now the investigation must continue – even if we don’t like the result,” said Stegner. This distinguishes democracies from dictatorships: “It must not be the case that we end up without knowledge and only with a hodgepodge of opposing theories.”