DISINFO: NATO sabotaged Nord Stream to position itself as needed to protect critical infrastructure
SUMMARY
NATO’s involvement in the Nord Stream affair is showing its underlying strategy, to make itself necessary to safeguard critical infrastructure. This is, the same thing that they blew up will serve as pretext to claim that they are more necessary than ever.
RESPONSE
Conspiracy theory not backed by any evidence. Responsibility for the Nord Stream sabotage has not yet been ascertained, as there is no definitive proof of which actor is behind it. International investigations by Germany, Sweden, Denmark and other countries remain open.
On 08 February 2023, Washington-critical US journalist Seymour Hersh accused US security services of having orchestrated the sabotage following orders by president Joe Biden. Multiple aspects of the his blog post article were later debunked or proven false, despite of which Russia has strongly amplified and promoted Hersh’ story. This disinformation story is, in fact, a reaction to the publication of several US and German media stories pointing in a different direction.
On 07 March 2023, The New York Times published an article quoting anonymous US officials who affirmed that, according to fresh intelligence, an unspecified “pro-Ukrainian group” would have carried out the operation. No evidence was provided to back the allegation. But the same day, a German media consortium led by Die Zeit reported that investigators were following leads about a specific recreative vessel -later identified by Der Spiegel as a yacht called ‘Andromeda’-, and that a group of six people with high-quality forged passports may have taken part in the operation. This was confirmed afterwards by Germany’s Federal Prosecutor Office, while many elements were also verified independently by other media outlets.
However, Russia has stuck to its previous stance. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov affirmed that “the authors of the attack want to distract attention”, and that “this is clearly a coordinated media blast”. This disinformation story accuses NATO and states an alleged motivation for it to carry out the sabotage, but doesn’t provide any evidence of its involvement. Talking about unsubstantiated allegations as if they were established facts while introducing minor variations, as in this case, is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation technique.
This disinformation narrative appeared in the same story as the claim that “Western media are working nonstop to create a smoke screen about Nord Stream”
See other examples of pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Nord Stream, such as claims that NATO might disintegrate because of the Nord Stream pipelines explosions, that Joe Biden violated the US Constitution by blowing up Nord Stream, that the US wants to silence the situation about the Nord Stream investigation, or that Joe Biden wanted to freeze Germany by destroying the Nord Stream.