US Navy ships were operating near Nord Stream shortly before the explosion that crippled gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, the Danish newspaper Politiken reported, citing a local port manager. The paper added that the ship's transponder - used to locate ships for safety purposes - had been turned off.
Three of the four branches of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines — built to supply Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe — were ruptured by underwater explosions in September 2022. The pipelines have been out of service since.
The Politiken article was published on September 26 but went largely unnoticed. However, it resurfaced on the X network on October 7 this week, with the claims reposted by US journalist Glenn Greenwald and other prominent journalists.
According to the article, the US warships had been operating in the area east of the Danish island of Bornholm for several days before the explosion with their transponders turned off. Thinking that the ship was in trouble, a manager at the nearby Danish port of Christiano, John Anker Nielsen, launched a rescue mission.
However, when they arrived at the scene, they found that the ships in question were US Navy ships. The US Navy Command then asked Nielsen and his colleagues to return.
Nielsen told Politiken that he decided to share details about events that took place in September 2022, despite initially being "not allowed to say."
Politiken wrote that Mr. Nielsen did not believe the Western media's claims that Nord Stream was sabotaged by Ukraine. According to Western media, a small group of Ukrainians allegedly used the yacht Andromeda to carry out the sophisticated attack.
Instead, Mr. Nielsen believes in the article of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
In early February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh wrote that the White House had ordered the destruction of Nord Stream.
According to a reliable source who spoke to this journalist, the explosives detonated on September 26, 2022 were planted in the Nord Stream pipeline by US Navy divers in June 2022 under the cover of a NATO exercise called Baltops 22.
The White House denied the allegations, calling the information "completely false and fictional".
Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have criticized the US and accused Washington of being the possible culprit behind the Nord Stream explosion.
The Russian side argues that Washington has the technical means to carry out this operation and would benefit the most, as the attack disrupts Russian gas supplies to the EU and forces the European Union to switch to more expensive American liquefied natural gas (LNG).
TASS quoted Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on October 9 that Russia has evidence of US and UK involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. And the publication of the said evidence will depend on the development of the situation.
The head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergey Naryshkin also stated that the United States and the United Kingdom were directly involved in the Nord Stream sabotage. He accused professional saboteurs from Anglo-Saxon intelligence agencies of being involved in the organization, preparation and execution of the Nord Stream explosion.
