• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

'Dark Ships' Emerge From The Shadow Of The Nord Stream Pipeline Mystery

maximus otter

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
Joined
Aug 9, 2001
Messages
13,948
The first gas leaks on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea were detected in the early hours of September 26, pouring up to 400,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere. Officials immediately suspected sabotage of the international pipeline. New analysis seen by WIRED shows that two large ships, with their trackers off, appeared around the leak sites in the days immediately before they were detected.

According to the analysis by satellite data monitoring firm SpaceKnow, the two “dark ships,” each measuring around 95 to 130 meters long, passed within several miles of the Nord Stream 2 leak sites. “We have detected some dark ships, meaning vessels that were of a significant size, that were passing through that area of interest,” says Jerry Javornicky, the CEO and cofounder of SpaceKnow. “They had their beacons off, meaning there was no information about their movement, and they were trying to keep their location information and general information hidden from the world,” Javornicky adds.

NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu says it does not comment on the “details of our support or the sources used” but confirmed that NATO believes the incident was a “deliberate and irresponsible act of sabotage” and it has increased its presence in the Baltic and North Seas. However, a NATO official, who did not have permission to speak publicly, confirmed to WIRED that NATO had received SpaceKnow’s data and said satellite imagery can prove useful for its investigations.

https://arstechnica.com/information...e-shadow-of-the-nord-stream-pipeline-mystery/

maximus otter
 
We should have more Nord Stream content here. It's weird that it disappeared completely from the news.

Here's an article on "America did it":
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

But this twitter says it's not a reputable source:
Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is convinced that US took out the Nord Stream pipelines. He writes in his latest piece how it happened. In 2015, he was convinced that Pentagon was in a secret alliance with Putin & Assad in Syria to undermine Obama.

Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

...

The C4 attached to the pipelines would be triggered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the procedure involved the most advanced signal processing technology. Once in place, the delayed timing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be accidentally triggered by the complex mix of ocean background noises throughout the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea—from near and distant ships, underwater drilling, seismic events, waves and even sea creatures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low frequency tonal sounds—much like those emitted by a flute or a piano—that would be recognized by the timing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trigger the explosives. (“You want a signal that is robust enough so that no other signal could accidentally send a pulse that detonated the explosives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol, who has served as the science adviser to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Operations, said the issue facing the group in Norway because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explosives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a random signal that would launch the bombs.”)

On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.
 
Interview with Seymour Hersh. I'm just posting the story and don't necessarily agree with his position.

Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Saturday that his latest exposure report that suggests the CIA was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September, was not a hard story to find. It was obvious that there was more to the issue than was being reported by most media outlets, Hersh said.

In his first interview, (Radio War Nerd EP #366 — Seymour Hersh on US Bombing Nord Stream Pipelines, https://www.patreon.com/posts/radio-war-nerd-78596220), since he published the story on Substack last Wednesday, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist was asked by Radio War Nerd to comment on his source for the story, who still remains anonymous.

Hersh refused to expose any details about who he spoke to and noted that it was his job to protect his sources and take the heat when a story went live. But those within the media who criticize him for using anonymous sources should “understand the business a little better,” the journalist suggested.

“The problem is, it has all been cheapened. Because now the New York Times and the Washington Post think an unnamed source can be a press guy, a press secretary, that whispers something to them on the side. I do not know, they do not seem to have anyone inside,” Hersh said.

He also noted that major news outlets are failing to report a lot of things about the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “The war I know about is not the war you are reading about,” Hersh observed.

“It is amazing to me how they feel in line, my colleagues,” he added, lamenting that many outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSN have become a front for the White House and the Biden administration. ...

https://countercurrents.org/2023/02...am-blast-story-was-not-hard-to-find/?swcfpc=1
 
So it was a Ukrainian group behind the attack.

Ongoing European investigations into the suspected acts of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines running through the Baltic Sea continue amid a new report citing U.S. intelligence assessment of the involvement of a pro-Ukrainian group.

The report, published Tuesday by The New York Times, cited unnamed U.S. officials who were said to have reviewed new intelligence pointing to an unidentified pro-Ukrainian group in underwater attacks last September that ravaged the pipelines designed to carry gas from Russia to Germany. The U.S. officials were cited as having no evidence of direct connections between the alleged group and the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, though no further details were provided.

The Washington Post then carried a piece citing diplomatic and intelligence officials from the U.S. and Europe who arrived at a similar conclusion.

The latest news marked a new turn in a case in which U.S. and European officials have offered few answers despite significant media attention.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordination John Kirby deferred questions about the report to the authorities of Denmark, Germany and Sweden, which have opened separate probes into the incident. ...

https://www.newsweek.com/europes-no...es-go-report-blames-pro-ukraine-group-1786194
 
ramonmercado said:
So it was a Ukrainian group behind the attack.

Ongoing European investigations into the suspected acts of sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines running through the Baltic Sea continue amid a new report citing U.S. intelligence assessment of the involvement of a pro-Ukrainian group.

The report, published Tuesday by The New York Times, cited unnamed U.S. officials who were said to have reviewed new intelligence pointing to an unidentified pro-Ukrainian group in underwater attacks last September that ravaged the pipelines designed to carry gas from Russia to Germany. The U.S. officials were cited as having no evidence of direct connections between the alleged group and the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, though no further details were provided.

The Washington Post then carried a piece citing diplomatic and intelligence officials from the U.S. and Europe who arrived at a similar conclusion.

The latest news marked a new turn in a case in which U.S. and European officials have offered few answers despite significant media attention.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordination John Kirby deferred questions about the report to the authorities of Denmark, Germany and Sweden, which have opened separate probes into the incident. ...

https://www.newsweek.com/europes-no...es-go-report-blames-pro-ukraine-group-1786194
Click to expand...
On the Dutch news they said that a "false flag" option still must be disproved to get full certainty. Russians are "false flag" masters. Americans less so, I think.

Personally I'm a bit disappointed with this result. A US attack would make a better conspiracy book :)
 
Well, it'd be believable that it was the Russians themselves, since they want to turn up the pressure of fuel shortages.
Especially now the grain ship 'truce' is coming to an end and Putin's looking 'less than cooperative'.
 

Germany searched boat suspected of carrying explosives used for Nord Stream pipelines attack​

"The Office of the Attorney General of Germany had a ship searched from January 18 to 20, 2023 in connection with a suspicious ship rental," the statement details.

Investigations are ongoing, and reliable statements cannot be issued yet, particularly as to whether a state controlled these plans, it added.

"There are no grounds for suspecting employees of the German company that leased the ship," the office said.
More details from German public broadcaster's report: The boat left the Baltic sea port of Rostock, Germany, on September 6, 2022, according to German public broadcaster ARD, citing its own investigation. The ARD reporting cited unnamed security sources from five countries.

ARD said the boat carried six people: one captain, two divers, two assistant divers and a doctor. The nationalities of those six are not known, according to ARD. The broadcaster said the group was using professionally falsified passports to rent the boat.

A truck delivered the group's gear to the harbor beforehand, it said.

ARD said the investigators, according to its research, were able to piece together the route of the boat after September 6: It went to Wieck, a German municipality east of Rostock, and could also be pinned on the Danish island of Christiansø, northeast of Bornholm.

The boat was – according to ARD — returned in a dirty state and the investigators, according to the broadcasters’ research, were able to find traces of explosives on the cabin table.

The German prosecutors’ office declined to give any more information when asked for any further details.
Click to expand...
 
I like to skim the headlines of the Swiss "Weltwoche" magazine because it's unapologetically rightist but intelligent. That's good mental gymnastics. As expected they have an anti-mainstream opinion on Nordstream. Too good not to translate here. I have no opinion, we'll see if this ages well :)

https://weltwoche.ch/daily/nord-str...e-werfen-mehr-fragen-auf-als-sie-beantworten/

Nord Stream blast: The new "revelations" are more like cover-ups. They raise more questions than they answer
Wolfgang Koydl 08.03.2023

What is a pro-Ukrainian group that carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, according to the New York Times?

The Bild newspaper under Johannes Boie and Paul Ronzheimer?
The FDP under Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann?
The German Foreign Office under Annalena Baerbock?
The EU under Ursula von der Leyen?

You could look at it that way. So they would probably also be considered as potential pipeline terrorists, wouldn't they?

The comparison shows how thin, transparent, not to say stupid, the latest blame game for the Nord Stream attack is.
Pro-Ukrainian group is everything and nothing. But it serves its purpose: it distracts from the US as the possible perpetrator and it washes Ukraine clean as the mastermind. It also keeps a loophole open for Russian involvement.
Perfect.
Except that nothing fits together.

What happened to the expert consensus that only a state actor could carry out such a complex explosive attack? And now it was half a dozen people with a better dinghy?
They had discovered traces of explosives "on the table". And these could not yet be compared with the explosive remains that Swedish investigators recovered months ago on the bottom of the Baltic Sea?
The new version also does not shed a good light on the German authorities - the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the BKA and the Federal Police. According to this, the terrorist attack was prepared under their eyes - and they saw nothing. Once again, the tip came from a friendly intelligence service.

But the security authorities are busy with the fight against the right. They can't take care of everything.
The "revelations" that have been leaked to media loyal to the government are anything but that. They serve to conceal and not to clarify.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
 
Perhaps it's the problem worth paying.
After all, the Crimea has always been popular with Russian tourists.
Besides, I'm sure China and North Korea have some luxury resorts set up just for the up-and-coming despot who needs to relax from signing off genocide.
 
Stormkhan said:
Perhaps it's the problem worth paying.
After all, the Crimea has always been popular with Russian tourists.
Besides, I'm sure China and North Korea have some luxury resorts set up just for the up-and-coming despot who needs to relax from signing off genocide.
Click to expand...
And Roger Waters' mansion has probably got a spare bedroom or two.
 
Well, Putin has been told, publically, he's a criminal.
Not sure that he cares though.
 
So maybe the Ukrainians did it.

A European spy agency told the CIA it knew of a Ukraine special operations team plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.

The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country's military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, were rocked by underwater explosions on 26 September, rendering them useless and cutting off a potential source of billions of dollars in earnings for Russia.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0606/1387737-nord-stream-pipeline/
 
ramonmercado said:
So maybe the Ukrainians did it.

A European spy agency told the CIA it knew of a Ukraine special operations team plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the Washington Post has reported.

The newspaper cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.

The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country's military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, were rocked by underwater explosions on 26 September, rendering them useless and cutting off a potential source of billions of dollars in earnings for Russia.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0606/1387737-nord-stream-pipeline/
Click to expand...
The information zone has been well and truly flooded, I doubt anyone will ever get to the truth with so many competing theories
 
Here is a German article suggesting that the Russians were involved:
https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Nord-Stream-Sprengung-Die-Spur-fuehrt-nach-Moskau-article24250566.html

What is interesting, however, is what one finds out about Diana B.. The excerpts from the commercial register for "Feeria Lwowa" list an address in Kerch, a city in Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014. An excerpt from the passport document, which is exclusively available to RTL and ntv, confirms that Diana B. is registered at this address. But even more explosive: She holds the Russian passport. Diana B. is originally from Uzbekistan and moved to Kerch with her family in 2001. She should never have possessed a Ukrainian passport, as Ukraine does not provide for dual citizenship. In the meantime, Diana B. has married and taken her husband's name. [Addendum: According to research by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", B. also possesses a Ukrainian passport. The authenticity of this document is now being verified].
That she was also in Warsaw during her business activities at "Feeria Lwowa" is evidenced by a photo from 2019 showing her in a well-known shopping street in the Polish capital. During that time, she held the post of managing director of the alleged travel agency.
Diana B. confirms stay in Russia
In the latest photos from June 2023, which Diana B. posted on her social networks, she can be seen in front of the soccer stadium in Krasnodar, Russia. Would a Ukrainian saboteur be able to safely stay on Russian territory? For CDU politician Roderich Kiesewetter, that is out of the question. "She would not be able to stay or move freely in Russia if she acted against the Russian state. After all, millions in assets have been destroyed there," says the CDU politician, who has seen the RTL research.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
 
According to the findings of the investigation thus far, a commando of divers and explosives specialists chartered the Andromeda almost exactly one year ago and sailed unnoticed from Warnemünde in northern Germany across the Baltic Sea before, on September 26, 2022, blowing holes in three pipes belonging to the natural gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. It was a catastrophic assault on energy supplies, a singular act of sabotage – an attack on Germany.

"This is the most important investigation of Germany's postwar history because of its potential political implications," says a senior security official. Those within the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) who are responsible for the Nord Stream case, members of Department ST 24, are even prohibited from discussing it with colleagues who aren't part of the probe. Investigators are required to document when and with whom they spoke about which aspect of the case – a requirement that is extremely unusual even at the BKA, Germany's equivalent to the FBI.

There is a lot at stake, that much is clear. If it was a Russian commando, would it be considered an act of war? According to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an attack on the critical infrastructure of a NATO member state can trigger the mutual defense clause. If it was Ukraine, would that put an end to Germany's ongoing support for the country with tank deliveries or potentially even fighter jets? And what about the Americans? If Washington provided assistance for the attack, might that spell the end of the 75-year trans-Atlantic partnership?

Much more here:
https://www.spiegel.de/internationa...a-4d0e-9894-942d4a665778?sara_ref=re-so-tw-sh

For example:
Perhaps the attack could have been prevented in the first place. It didn't come as a complete surprise, after all. It had been announced several months beforehand, in detail. But the warning wasn't taken seriously enough in the right places.

An encrypted, strictly confidential dispatch from an allied intelligence agency was received by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND – Germany's foreign intelligence agency) in June 2022. Such dispatches are hardly an anomaly, but this one contained a clear warning. It was from the Netherlands' military intelligence agency, which goes by the initials MIVD and is well known for its expertise in Russian cyberwarfare techniques. On this occasion, though, the agency's alarming information seemed to have come from a human asset in Kyiv.

The Dutch also informed the CIA – which, just to be on the safe side, also forwarded it onward to the Germans.
 
Last edited:
https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artik...en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true

Clues point to a Ukrainian team.

New clues in Nord Stream investigation: several Ukrainians in the picture

A year after the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, it is still not clear who is behind the sabotage. Yet there are increasing indications that the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian team. Joint research by various European media, including NOS and Nieuwsuur , managed to identify two people involved. According to sources close to the German criminal investigation, there is a growing belief that the perpetrators come from Ukraine.

The joint investigation also sheds new light on the route taken by the sailing ship from which the attack is said to have been carried out. The media also spoke to new eyewitnesses who saw the crew of this boat.
 

The Most Consequential Act of Sabotage in Modern Times​


At 2:03 a.m. on Monday, September 26, 2022, at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, an explosion tore open one of the four massive underwater conduits that make up the Nord Stream pipeline. The pipe, made of thick, concrete-encased steel, lay at a depth of 260 feet. It was filled with highly compressed methane gas.

Pressure readings would show a sudden plunge as compressed gas screamed through the breach at the speed of sound, tearing the pipe apart and carving deep craters on the seafloor. Gas escaped with enough force to propel a rocket into space. It shot up and up, creating a towering geyser above the surface of the water.

There was no one in the vicinity—the middle of the sea in the middle of the night—to see or hear any of this, but the event registered with the force of a small earthquake on seismometers 15 miles away, on the Danish island of Bornholm. Because the explosion had occurred in Danish waters, Denmark dispatched an airplane to investigate. By then, the geyser had settled into a wide, turbulent simmer on the surface.

Any thought that the break was an accident vanished at sunset, when new explosions on the pipeline were recorded, 17 hours after the first one. It would eventually be determined that there were three of them, and that they occurred about 50 miles northeast of the initial blast and about 50 miles east of the Swedish coast, near the edge of that country’s maritime economic zone with Denmark. The blasts scattered several 26-ton, 40-foot-long segments of pipeline on the seafloor. At this northern site, there were witnesses. An officer aboard a German cargo ship, the Cellus, saw what seemed to be the surface eruption from an underwater explosion; the captain of the ship, looking for himself, later reported “something that appeared like a dense cloud” above the water. A photo taken several minutes after the first sighting captured a bubbling swell of gas-infused seawater, which calculations from the digital image showed to be nearly 200 feet high and more than 1,000 feet wide.

Now, with two blast sites—a southern site, with a single explosion, and a northern site, with three explosions—it was clear that someone had attacked Nord Stream...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-mystery-that-no-one-wants-solved/ar-AA1lrQad

maximus otter
 
New details: US reporter Seymour Hersh confirms his thesis that the Biden administration is responsible for the Nord Stream blast. The big profiteer, however, is Norway

Seymour Hersh follows up. The American investigative journalist, who reported in detail around ten months ago that the US administration under President Joe Biden was responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, reinforced his thesis at the end of the year and added further details. The role he ascribes to Norway is interesting.

Hersh assumes that in the weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Americans carried out a covert mission in the Baltic Sea together with Norway and mined the pipelines. The aim was to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade by threatening to blow up Nord Stream otherwise.

When the invasion took place anyway, the American team, working with Norwegian special forces, was instructed to continue their work and find a way to carry out the demolition later.

Nord Stream 1 had been supplying Germany with cheap Russian gas since 2011. The newly built Nord Stream 2 was in the final stages of completion when it was shut down by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under American pressure in February 2022, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since the pipeline exploded in the fall of 2022, no more gas has been able to flow from Russia, which has hit the German economy hard.

This month, it was announced that Sefe, a German state-owned energy company, has signed a 50 billion euro deal with Norway's Equinor. It includes supplying Germany with a third of its industrial gas needs from Norway for ten years, with an option for a five-year extension.

Hersh now quotes an "American official" who is familiar with the political use of energy and describes the Norwegian deal with some sarcasm as "an amazing stroke of luck for Scholz", "just when his base was facing another gas-free winter". "Miraculously," he added, "the deal coincides with Russia's premature closure of gas and oil fields that - but for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines - would have been the source of gas for the two pipelines." "As far as the Norwegians are concerned," the official continued, according to Hersh, "the best way to expand market share has always been to eliminate the competition ...

https://weltwoche.ch/daily/neue-det...der-grosse-profiteur-ist-allerdings-norwegen/
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
 

Sweden Ends Nord Stream Pipeline Investigation Without Identifying Culprit​


Swedish officials said Wednesday that they have decided to close their investigation into the September 2022 explosions on the underwater Nord Stream gas pipelines which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany, saying they don’t have jurisdiction.

Sweden’s investigation was only one of three into the explosions. Denmark and Germany are also examining the blasts.

Public prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist from the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement that “Swedish jurisdiction does not apply.”

The probe’s primary purpose was “to establish whether Swedish citizens were involved” and whether Sweden somehow was used to carry out the detonations, thereby putting the Scandinavian country at risk, the authority said.

Hans Liwång of the Sweden Defense University called it “a natural decision.”

“Already from the beginning, they said that it’s not necessarily the case that this is a crime performed toward Sweden.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/20...ne-investigation-without-identifying-culprit/

maximus otter
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top