Polish PM wants Nord Stream scandal buried

Whoever funded and carried out the sabotage operation should shut up, Donald Tusk has said

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged those responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines to “keep quiet,” as intelligence sources in Germany point to a joint Polish-Ukrainian plot to destroy the underwater lines.

According to German media, prosecutors in Berlin issued an arrest warrant in June for a Ukrainian national known as ‘Vladimir Z’ in connection with the destruction of the pipelines. Working with a team of saboteurs, Vladimir Z is believed to have rented a yacht in Poland, sailed to a site in the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm, and planted explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.

German investigators filed a cooperation request with their Polish counterparts in the hope of locating the suspect, who is said to have been tracked to a location west of Warsaw before disappearing, German state broadcaster ARD reported.

In a post on X on Saturday, Tusk appeared keen to quash any attempts to investigate the attack.

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Poland probably involved in Nord Stream blasts – ex-German spymaster

“To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2,” he wrote. “The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.”

According to ARD, Poland, despite EU inter-state regulations, has failed to respond to Berlin’s request for cooperation. In an interview with Die Welt on Thursday, the former president of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, August Hanning, claimed that Poland was likely involved in facilitating the attack.

“The way it seems is that it was a Ukrainian team that… operated there,” he said, referring to Poland. However, he added, “this was of course only possible with support from the land.”

“When we look at the map… pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged here, and I think not only agencies… I think that this was an arrangement between [people] at the top level in Ukraine and in Poland,” he speculated.

Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski rejected Hanning’s accusations, telling the Polsat broadcaster on Friday that “Poland did not take part in anything.”

Back in January, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Poland’s internal security agency refused to turn over testimony from eyewitnesses who encountered the yacht’s crew, withheld CCTV footage from the Polish port of Kolobrzeg where the vessel was moored, and “failed to answer queries, obfuscated or gave contradictory information,” when pressed by German investigators.

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Zelensky gave initial order for Nord Stream attack – WSJ

The Nord Stream lines were destroyed in September 2022, more than a year before Tusk took office. However, Poland’s previous conservative government appeared to openly approve of the attack, with then-Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski sharing an image of a giant gas leak at the blast site along with the caption “Thank you, USA” within hours of the explosions.

While German investigators have apparently coalesced around the idea that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, an alternate theory put forward by American journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the CIA was responsible. Citing sources within the intelligence community, Hersh argued that CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy planted remotely-triggered bombs on the lines last summer, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover. 

The aim of the CIA operation, Hersh’s sources allege, was to sever Germany’s main gas links to Russia, removing the opportunity for Berlin to lift sanctions on Moscow and resume gas deliveries.

Officials in Kiev maintain that Russia blew up its own pipelines, a claim that has been ridiculed by the Kremlin.