Intro: Nord Stream 2 is a mostly completed $11 billion pipeline between Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea whose certification Berlin put on hold with tensions high ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Western leaders have repeatedly accused Moscow of "weaponizing" gas and other energy deliveries as it continues its full-scale war on Ukraine, which is also a major transit country for Russian gas.
In Vladivostok, Putin said sanctions had prompted the gas crisis and said Ukraine had shut down one of the routes on its territory for Russian gas on its own initiative.
He also said Poland had shut down the Yamal-Europe pipeline from Western Siberia through Belarus and Poland to Germany.
Flows through Yamal-Europe have been reversed to flow eastward between Poland and Germany since early this year, and Moscow has imposed sanctions on the owner of the pipeline's Polish segment.
Putin said EU discussions of a possible price cap on Russian gas were "stupid."
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With reporting by Reuters
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Posted: 2 days ago
Posted: Sep 6, 2022
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✓ NATO Statement by the North Atlantic Council
The North Atlantic Council (NAC) has issued a statement on the damage to the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
NAC Statement On Damage To Baltic Sea Gas Pipelines | Joint Forces News
Press Release, Brussels, 29 September 2022: Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the damage to gas pipelines. The NATO Invitees associate themselves with this Statement.
- The damage to the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 pipelines in international waters in the Baltic Sea is of deep concern. All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage. These leaks are causing risks to shipping and substantial environmental damage. We support the investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage.
- We,
as Allies, have committed to prepare for, deter and defend against the
coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state
actors. Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure
would be met with a united and determined response."
✓
Biden ducks question on Nord Stream leaks, slams 'sham' Putin annexation
President Biden on Thursday ripped Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shameless” plan to annex four Ukrainian regions after “sham” votes — shortly after citing Hurricane Ian to avoid discussing the mysterious disabling of two Russian natural gas pipelines to Western Europe.
Biden said at a gathering of Pacific island nations in Washington that he wanted to “briefly address the shameless and transparent effort by Russia to annex parts of its neighbor Ukraine,” despite his unwillingness hours earlier to discuss the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline leaks...
Earlier Wednesday, Biden refused to comment on the pipeline breaches while visiting the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington.
Asked if Russia was responsible for the pipeline leaks, Biden answered: “Let’s stick with this, okay?”
“But it’s an important international issue,” the reporter protested
“There’s a lot of important international issues,” Biden snapped. “We’re here to talk about America.” . .
Sweden and Denmark on Tuesday said that the explosions that caused Nord Stream 1 and 2 to leak were intentional, but did not attribute blame.
The NATO alliance said Thursday that “currently available information indicates that [the leaks are] the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage,” but also refrained from pointing fingers.
Some American conservatives have floated the possibility that someone other than Russia was responsible for the pipeline issues — as former President Donald Trump warned the incident could trigger a larger war.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of pro-Trump youth organization Turning Point USA, said that the pipeline destruction was “a potential midterm election operation.”
Meanwhile, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said
Tuesday, “If you are Vladimir Putin you would have to be a suicidal
moron to blow up your own energy pipeline — that’s one thing you would
never do. Natural gas pipelines are the main source of your power and
wealth. And most critically, your leverage over other countries.”
Although NATO countries have accused Russia of “weaponizing” its energy resources during the more than seven-month war, Germany under US pressure halted plans to open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline days before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and Biden under bipartisan pressure banned Russian oil imports in March.
Trump said in a Wednesday social media post that there should be a “negotiated deal” to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict because “[t]he entire World is at stake.”
“U.S. ‘Leadership’ should remain ‘cool, calm, and dry’ on the SABOTAGE of the Nord Stream Pipelines,” Trump wrote. “This is a big event that should not entail a big solution, at least not yet. The Russia/Ukraine catastrophe should NEVER have happened, and would definitely not have happened if I were President. Do not make matters worse with the pipeline blowup. Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW. Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake. I will head up group???”
✓
Putin names chief suspects for Nord Stream attack
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'The US and UK orchestrated the blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which delivered Russian natural gas to Germany, because they “obviously” benefit from it, President Vladimir Putin insisted on Friday.
Putin accused Washington of trying to pressure the EU into banning Russian supplies to “completely get its hands on the European market.”
“But the sanctions are no longer enough for the Anglo-Saxons,” he said, using Russian shorthand for the US-UK transatlantic alliance. “They have turned to sabotage – it’s unbelievable, but it’s a fact – by organizing the explosions on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines,” the president stated.
“They de facto began the destruction of the common European energy infrastructure. It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it. Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced Putin's statement as part of “outrageous misinformation and disinformation campaigns” coming from Moscow.
“I really have nothing to say to the absurd allegation from President Putin that we are or other partners or allies are somehow responsible for this,” Blinken said, according to AFP.
Putin was speaking at the Kremlin ahead of signing treaties on the inclusion of the two Donbass republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which declared independence from Ukraine, into the Russian Federation.
The Nord Stream pipelines lost pressure on Monday, after which four gas leaks appeared. The EU and several of its member states said the explosions were deliberate. Putin described the attack on Saturday as an act of terrorism.
Nord Stream 1 was already shut down due to prolonged maintenance when the leaks appeared. Russian operator Gazprom blamed the lengthy delay on Western sanctions that were imposed on Moscow following its military operation in Ukraine.
Nord Stream 2 was never fully operational because Germany halted certification of it in February in response to the Ukraine conflict."
✓
The US stands to win most from disabling the Russian-German gas link and has a record of such attacks, Nikolay Patrushev said
"The US stands to benefit economically from the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and has a record of targeting energy infrastructure with sabotage operations, the head of Russia's Security Council said.
“Pretty much from the first minutes after the news of the explosions broke … the West launched an active campaign for assigning blame. But it is obvious that the primary beneficiary, first of all in the economic sense, was the US,” Nikolay Patrushev said on Friday.
He compared this week’s incident with the attack on Nicaragua’s oil infrastructure in Puerto Sandino in 1983. Back then CIA officers, based on a ship moored in international waters, coordinated a raid by commandos they had trained to fight against the Sandinista government, US press reported at the time. The US spy agency also provided speed boats for the raid, according to a CIA source cited by Associated Press.
The operation was part of the Reagan administration’s “dirty war” on Nicaragua, which later led to the Iran-Contras scandal. The CIA’s secret sale of weapons to Iran to fund Latin American militants was exposed in 1986.
Patrushev made the remarks at a meeting with fellow security officials from former Soviet nations.
“It appears to be necessary to coordinate our effort to expose the masterminds and executors of this crime, setting a good example for effective cooperation,” he told his counterparts.
✓ He noted that Washington's goal was “ensuring strategic and economic superiority over alternative centers of power” even though the EU, a US ally, has been suffering from its policies. The US is replacing Russian natural gas with its more expensive liquified natural gas, as the bloc moves to decouple its economy from Russian energy sources.
✓ The leaks in the two Nord Stream pipelines were first detected on Monday, when pressure in the undersea links connecting Russia directly to Germany drastically dropped. The pipelines were apparently breached with explosives, with the blasts detected by earthquake sensors in Sweden.
Moscow called the incident an international terrorist attack against civilian infrastructure, while some Western officials described it as an act of sabotage.
Some critics of Russia speculated that Moscow decided to blow up its own gas links with Germany to put pressure on the EU.
Polish MEP and former Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski thanked the US for the incident, but later deleted the tweet, calling his implied assertion of Washington’s involvement a personal working theory:"
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