Germany's Ministry of Home Affairs has permanently stationed a tactical police unit at the Baltic Sea port of Neustadt to ensure a rapid response to any potential attack on "critical infrastructure," German weekly Der Spiegel reported on October 11.
The move is believed to be due to the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion in September 2022, which showed a "clear" risk of "sabotage" - Der Spiegel quoted security sources as saying.
GSG 9, the German Federal Police's counter-terrorism unit, has a sea-based unit called GSG 9/2, which is staffed by specially trained divers and equipped with speedboats. They can also operate from German Federal Police vessels.
According to other German media, the German Ministry of Home Affairs did not publicly confirm Der Spiegel's information about the unit's redeployment by saying that they could not provide information about the GSG 9's deployment location for "tactical reasons".
"In view of current threats... through acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure or terrorist attacks, the ability to respond quickly to crises is of paramount importance," a spokesperson for the German Ministry of Home Affairs told reporters.
A regional lawmaker in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein told media that the decision was made on October 9. "In the city of Neustadt, the Federal Police has its own port... where four 86-meter rescue vessels are moored," which could be used by GSG 9 if necessary, said lawmaker Bettina Hagedorn.
The Nord Stream gas pipeline – a key energy infrastructure built to transport Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe – was ruptured by underwater explosions in September 2022.
Berlin has launched an investigation into the incident but has so far not made any of its findings public. Moscow has repeatedly said that German authorities refuse to share any information with Russia.
Western media have repeatedly reported that a group of Ukrainian divers were allegedly behind the attack. Some newspapers have also suggested that the group allegedly acted on orders from the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, who was later dismissed and became Ukraine's Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Russia has repeatedly said that the US may have had a hand in the incident. In September, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, accused the US and the UK of masterminding the sabotage of Nord Stream in 2022.
"The US administration considers it reasonable to carry out such destructive actions to divide Europe and, above all, to divide Germany from Russia," SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin said, suggesting that Washington is "unsure" whether it can convince Berlin and other European Union (EU) countries to abandon their "extremely profitable" economic ties with Moscow.
In February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article claiming that Washington had ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. The US denied involvement, calling the article "completely false".
German lawmaker Sahra Wagenknecht also questioned the Berlin government's silence on the Nord Stream sabotage and called for the establishment of an independent parliamentary inquiry commission to look into the matter.
