Poland denies involvement in Nord Stream pipeline sabotage

Warsaw has rejected reports that Poland could have been involved in the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, a series of clandestine bombings that interrupted natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe, Polish intelligence service coordinator Stanisław Żaryn tweeted.

“Associating Poland with these events is baseless,” he noted. “The hypothesis that the blow up was committed by Russia, which had the motive and the ability to carry out such an operation, remains valid.”

Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing the German investigation team, that the Nord Stream bombing squad could have used Poland as a “springboard for the pipeline attack”.

The investigators reached this conclusion after retracing the two-week-long navigation route of the Andromeda yacht which could have been used for the sabotage operation. The theory that Poland could have been used as an operating base to ready the attack is corroborated by the fact that a white van of the sabotage team believed to be behind it and featured in CCTV footage in a German port had a Polish number plate.

WSJ sources note that Berlin has no evidence linking the Polish authorities to the bombings.

On 26 September, two separate gas leaks were detected in Nord Stream 1 in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone northeast of Bornholm Island. Another rupture was recorded later in Nord Stream 2 southeast of the island. Swedish and Danish seismological stations identified powerful underwater explosions in the same area.

Der Tagesspiegel reported that the pipelines could have been damaged in a deliberate attack that was either masterminded by Ukraine or Russia; the operation could have involved professional divers or a submarine.

The New York Times cited US officials to claim that US intelligence community data points to the fact that a “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the Nord Stream attack. At the same time, The Washington Post stressed that there had been no evidence proving that the explosions were linked to any particular country.

Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in early June that a Ukrainian service member could have been one of the Nord Stream sabotage perpetrators. At the same time, the newspaper added that German investigators did not discover any links between the man in question and Kyiv authorities.