Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh alleges that US Navy divers laid the bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September, cutting Russian gas supplies to Europe. The Pentagon has denied the claim but Moscow, which Western countries suspect of involvement, says it should be taken seriously.
According to a blog written by Hersh on the site Substack, American navy divers planted remotely triggered explosives that wrecked three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.
Hersh claims that the US Navy planted the explosives under the cover of a Nato maritime exercise, Baltic Operation 22, known as BaltOps, which involved vessels from 14 Nato member states and took place in the Baltic between 5 and 17 June 2022.
In his article, Hersh puts the motivation for the attack down to a simple political calculation.
"With Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming," he writes, "President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponise natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions."
Hersh argues that the pipelines posed strategic dangers.
"America’s political fears were real," the article continues. "Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia – while diminishing European reliance on America."
Moscow blamed for explosion
The September 2022 explosions were blamed by Western countries on Russia, adding to the anger against Moscow in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.
Investigations by Swedish, Danish and German authorities have not pinned the blame on any one country or actor.
Swedish investigators have already said they believe the blasts were the result of “gross sabotage".
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned that the Nord Stream 2 project connecting Russia and Germany would not move forward if an attack took place. This led some commentators to suspect US involvement when the pipelines were destroyed seven months later.
“If Russia invades – that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again – then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said on 7 February 2022. “We will bring an end to it.”
Pentagon denial
Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron J. Garn says "the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosion".
"This is utterly false and complete fiction," stated Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Hersh's work is a "very serious" article that offered "deep analysis".
"It would be unfair not to give it attention," he said. "Unfortunately, the article was not widely disseminated in the Western media, which cannot but cause our surprise."
Peskov added that Moscow had information "on the involvement of the Anglo-Saxons in the organisation of this act of sabotage", a claim Russia has made repeatedly but without providing any evidence publicly.
Hersh, who is now 85 years old, has been accused of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories.
He won the Pulitzer Prize, US journalism's top award, five decades ago for his articles exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968.
He has since stirred controversy with an article published in the London Review of Books in 2015 that claimed the official version of the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US Marines was a complete fabrication, designed to protect high-level Pakistani military informers.
(with wires)
