Denmark has invited the Nord Stream consortium to help recover a cylindrical object under the Baltic Sea that was discovered near the sabotaged Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and has been flagged as suspicious by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The Energy Agency has offered the owner company Nord Stream 2 to participate in the salvage operation,” it said in a statement on Thursday evening, six months after the spectacular sabotage operation against the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines.
The date of the operation is not yet known, as is the response from the operator, whose majority owner is Russia’s Gazprom.
The object, which has not been identified but according to the authority does not pose a security risk, has to be reassembled with the help of the Danish defense.
The agency released a photo of the object, which is said to be 40cm high and 10cm in diameter.
“The object may be a maritime smoke buoy. This will be the subject of further investigation,” writes the agency.
The discovery of this object, discovered by Gazprom, was revealed by Vladimir Putin himself two weeks ago, with the Russian President implying a possible role in the sabotage.
“Specialists believe that it could be an antenna for receiving a signal to activate an explosive device that could be placed in this (part of) the gas pipeline,” the Russian head of state told Russian 24 TV channel.
Almost six months after the explosions that struck the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, responsibility for the underwater attack still remains a mystery, despite criminal investigations in countries bordering the sabotage (Germany, Sweden and Denmark).
At the beginning of March, Germany announced that it would examine a boat suspected of having transported the explosives there without being able to draw any conclusions about the identity of the perpetrators.
A “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the sabotage, the New York Times said in early March, based on information from the US secret service, but without the participation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.