U.S. Intelligence Points The Finger At Ukraine For Being Responsible In Destroying The Nord Stream Pipelines

Photo: Danish Defence / Handout / AFP 

 Spiegel: Attacks Expose Vulnerability of European Infrastructure 

The search for the perpetrators has begun following Monday's sabotage attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Which countries could have been behind it, and how secure is Europe's critical infrastructure at the bottom of the sea? 

The route of the gas pipelines through the Baltic Sea could have been copied out of a cruise catalogue. From Ust-Luga near St. Petersburg, the route leads through the Gulf of Finland, then south past the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, past Gotland in Sweden, past Bornholm through Danish waters before approaching the German coast and ending in Lubmin in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It's a route where you wouldn't typically expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, a region intended for comfortable vacations. A place where all was well. 

Read more ....  

WNU Editor: What caught my eye in the above Der Speigel report is this ....

.... The Germans were warned in summer by the CIA about a possible attack scenario on the Nord Stream pipelines. U.S. intelligence claimed to have intercepted Russian communications in which concerns were expressed about possible Ukrainian attacks on Western infrastructure. The Ukrainians allegedly tried to rent a boat in Sweden for this purpose. The CIA did not consider the scenario of a Ukrainian attack to be very credible, but the mere fact that the possibility of an attack on Western infrastructure was mentioned by the Russian side prompted the Americans to warn the Germans about the scenario. 

Is Ukraine responsible for launching an attack that destroyed Nord stream 1 and 2? Maybe. 

For the past few months I have been reading and hearing reports from Russian media and social media of Ukrainian plans and plots ranging from a dirty bomb or chemical attack on Moscow or Saint Pertersburg to false flag operations where Russia would be blamed. I presume this is what the CIA is talking about. 

But to conduct a maritime operation on the Nord Stream pipelines where hundreds of kilograms of high explosives were placed at four different locations to explode at the same time is a sophistication that I do not see Ukraine having.