DISINFO: The West in hiding behind Kyiv in the Nord Stream explosion case
SUMMARY
The German prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant against a Kyiv citizen, Vladimir Zhuravlyov, a suspect in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipeline bombings in the Baltic Sea. He was probably recruited. It is unlikely that Ukraine could carry out such an operation alone [...] it seems that the West is trying to hide behind Kyiv. It is not surprising that Western countries supporting Ukraine are trying to make it the sole culprit in the Nord Stream explosion [...] Ukraine is useful for Western countries because they can hide behind it. It is clear that the main beneficiary of the explosion is not Ukraine, but the United States, which benefited from harming its competitors in the EU.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation alleging that the West/US is behind the sabotage explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
This recurring claim resurfaced in the context of a media investigative report informing that the German authorities have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian suspect for carrying out the Nord Stream explosion on 26 September 2022.
German news outlets Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit and the public broadcaster ARD have jointly published an investigation on 14 August 2024 claiming that Germany has issued an arrest warrant nearly two years ago against a Ukrainian citizen who is believed to have carried out the Nord Stream explosion in September 2022.
According to the investigative report, the suspect and two other accomplices approached the driver of a German-flagged yacht, which docked in the northern island of Rügen, and directed him to the pipeline's location; two of the three suspects put on diving gears and went underwater. The yacht driver has reportedly identified the suspect from photos shown to him by the police. According to the report, a white van suspected of being used to transport diving material was caught on a traffic camera in Rügen in September 2022 with a passenger strongly resembling the suspect.
As the suspect is not found, it is still unclear who ordered the attack. There is so far no public evidence linking the attack to any state or group, despite the baseless insistence of pro-Kremlin outlets that the attack was carried out by foreign governments. Additionally, pro-Kremlin outlets have made numerous claims in the past contradicting the recent findings that it now promotes, such as that the American and Norwegian divers blew up Nord Stream and that British navy specialists were involved in implementing the attacks against the pipelines.
See similar cases that Washington scapegoats Kyiv for Nord Stream explosion to restore relations with Germany, Nord Stream pipelines were blown up by US intelligence, that the US benefits from the destroying of Nord Stream because it can now sell more liquefied natural gas to Europe; that the US blew up Nord Stream so that the EU would arm Ukraine, and that Nord Stream destruction was an American terrorist attack.