June 10 (Portal) – German investigators are reviewing evidence suggesting a sabotage team used Poland as a base of operations to damage the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
Investigators reconstructed the two-week voyage of the Andromeda, a 15-meter-long yacht suspected of being involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, the newspaper said.
The Journal quoted people familiar with the voyage as pointing out that the sabotage crew planted deep-sea explosives on Nord Stream 1 before setting the vessel on course for Poland. It added that Germany is trying to match the DNA samples found on the ship to “at least one Ukrainian soldier”.
The German Federal Criminal Police Office and the Polish government spokesman did not immediately respond to Portal requests for comment, but a senior Polish official suggested the newspaper report was the result of Russian propaganda.
“Information about Polish or Ukrainian references to the destruction of NS1 and NS2, which is repeated in the media, is consistently used by the Russian influence apparatus to give the recipients the impression/suspicion that Warsaw and Kiev are behind this incident” , Stanislaw Zaryn, Deputy Ministerial Coordinator of Poland for Special Services, wrote on Twitter.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 put Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas into the political limelight. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines accelerated the region’s switch to other energy suppliers.
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, each consisting of two pipes, were built by Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom to pump 110 billion cubic meters (billion cubic yards) of natural gas to Germany annually.
The Washington Post reported this week that the US learned of a Ukrainian plan to attack the pipelines three months before they were damaged by blasts in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark.
Both countries said the explosions were deliberate, but it was still unclear who was responsible.
In March, German media identified the possible involvement of a Polish-based company’s yacht owned by Ukrainian citizens in the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told German media on Wednesday that Ukraine had not attacked the pipelines.
Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru. Additional reporting by Karol Badohal in Warsaw. Edited by William Mallard and Helen Popper
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