Who attacked the Nord Stream pipelines?

The identity of who ordered and carried out the attack is, for now, one of the biggest questions of the 21st century. It is a puzzle that holds the key to pipelines that cost around $20 billion and over 15 years to construct and could have yoked Europe to Russian gas for decades to come.

“There are aspects of this mystery that resemble an Agatha Christie novel, in which nearly everyone involved appears to have a motive or would benefit from the outcome,” Sergey Vakulenko, an independent Russian energy analyst, wrote in an article published by the Carnegie think-tank.

Four months on, none of the three separate investigations by Denmark, Germany and Sweden have said publicly who they believe was responsible. Sweden’s state security service announced in November that it had discovered traces of explosives at the site of the blasts, but gave no further details.

The silence around the investigations, which have used underwater sensors, submarines and satellite images to try to establish the facts, has sparked rumours and sporadic accusations of a cover-up, as well as disquiet about the perceived lack of transparency.

“I understand, especially in times of war, that these delicate investigations may require secrecy,” Konstantin von Notz, the chairman of the German parliamentary committee that oversees the intelligence services, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

“[But] in a constitutional state, the public has a right to know what really happened. The federal government must break its silence very soon, create transparency, or at least present a plausible narrative.”

A failure to do so is likely to spark dangerous conspiracy theories and “wild speculation”, warned Roderich Kiesewetter, the deputy head of the Bundestag committee. It is also important, analysts said, to determine how the attack was carried out at a time when other critical infrastructure could be at risk during the war in Ukraine.

A western analyst, who asked not to be identified, admitted that he was surprised by the paucity of information that had so far been made available by investigators. “This was a major infrastructure attack. It’s strange that we’ve heard very little.”

The Kremlin has furiously denied any suggestions that it would have targeted its own pipelines, calling the allegations “stupid and absurd”. And some western officials appear to agree. The German investigation is thought to have made little progress so far, with officials having yet to uncover any compelling evidence. However, The Times understands that they remain open to theories that a western state carried out the bombing with the aim of blaming it on Russia.

In addition, 23 diplomatic and intelligence officials in nine different western countries told the Washington Post recently that they had yet to see evidence linking Russia to the attack. Some said they did not believe Russia was to blame.

Some have questioned why Moscow would have blown up the pipelines given that the Kremlin had invested billions into the construction of Nord Stream, whose major shareholder is Gazprom, the Russian energy giant. The project also provided Moscow with a steady stream of revenues, while increasing Europe’s energy reliance on Russia. Gazprom switched off Nord Stream 1 after the start of the war, in a move that was widely seen as an attempt to put pressure on Kyiv’s European allies. Nord Stream 2, which was completed in 2021, never came online. However, Russia could have blown up its own pipeline to sow instability in Europe.

Simone Tagliapietra, an energy policy expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels, said the bombing of the pipelines could have been a result of in-fighting within Russia, where it was seen as one of the country’s major achievements since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Somebody in Moscow might have been pushing for a restart of the flows, given the economic consequences of the interruption to Russia itself. And [the attacks] might have been a way to prevent that kind of conversation internally in Russia,” he said.

Podolyak, the Ukrainian presidential adviser, had a much simpler explanation. “Don’t look for any rational logic in Russia’s actions,” he told The Times this week. “Russia works differently. It relies on actions which are illogical but that it believes will intimidate. Its economy is on the backburner now.”

August Hanning, a former director of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, argued late last year, however, that several other countries besides Russia could conceivably have had an interest in disabling the pipelines. He named the United States, Ukraine, Poland and Britain. “They all have their reasons,” he said.

All four countries, as well as the Baltic states, were opposed to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline over fears that the Kremlin’s weaponisation of energy supplies would increase Russia’s political influence in Europe at a time when relations between Moscow and the West were at a post-Cold War low.

Russia has had no qualms about playing the blame game, however. In October, Moscow accused the British Royal Navy of carrying out the blasts. The British defence ministry said Moscow was “peddling false claims of an epic scale” to distract its citizens from its army’s failures on the battlefields of Ukraine.

For some, comments made by President Biden just two weeks before the start of the Ukraine war make Washington the main suspect. “If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. When pressed on what he meant, the US president replied: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”

After the blasts, officials in Russia highlighted Biden’s remarks, which they suggested had signalled Washington’s intention to try to destroy the pipelines. Radoslaw Sikorski, the former Polish foreign minister, also referenced Biden’s comments in a Twitter post that read: ‘Thank you, USA.” He later deleted it.

Speaking on Russian state television today, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, accused the US of “direct involvement” in the Nord Stream blasts. He said the attack was aimed at preserving Washington’s global dominance, but gave no further details.

The White House denied that Biden had threatened to blow up Nord Stream, pointing out that his comments were made during a discussion with journalists about potential sanctions that would freeze the pipeline project, if Russia invaded. A short clip of Biden’s remarks, without the context of sanctions, was promoted heavily on social media by Russian bots.

Western analysts also argued that it was unlikely that the Biden administration, which in 2021 waived sanctions against Nord Stream 2 in an attempt to improve ties with Berlin, would sign off on an attack on the pipelines.

“The United States has supported European energy security for decades,” said Benjamin Schmitt, a research associate at Harvard University and a former European energy security adviser at the US State Department. “The idea that this same US administration would suddenly reverse its energy security policy for critical infrastructure protection across Europe and carry out a drastic kinetic strike is unthinkable.”

Yet a recent report by The New York Times suggested that Russia has begun estimating the price of repairing the pipelines, raising once more the question of why Putin would choose to bomb them in the first place. A person briefed on the work said that any eventual repairs could cost about $500 million.

“If this was an attack that was meant to say that the energy link between Russia and Europe can be severed, as well as demonstrate Russia’s influence over Europe, then it appears not to have worked, at least for now. And so potential repairs could be a case of saying ‘well, it didn’t work, so now we need to move on’ and that it would be good [for Moscow] to reopen this channel,” said Joseph Majkut, an energy security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. A milder than expected winter in Europe and moves to diversify energy supply helped the continent rely less on the Kremlin.

For now, there seems little likelihood of clarity in the near future. And some are warning that the difficulties of collecting sufficient evidence may ultimately prove insurmountable.

“I don’t think it is surprising that there is not a set of conclusive evidence yet,” said Schmitt, the former US state department energy adviser. “The subsea forensics process is going to always take a lot longer. This may be a scenario where we may never have a smoking gun.”