Russia Says NATO Should Hold Emergency Summit Over Nord Stream Sabotage

Journalist Seymour Hersh reported that President Biden authorized the bombing of the pipelines

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said over the weekend that NATO countries should hold an emergency summit over the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines after a report from journalist Seymour Hersh said US Navy divers planted explosives on the pipelines.

“There have been plenty of facts: pipeline explosions, motives and indirect evidence obtained by journalists. So when will an emergency NATO summit gather to analyze the situation?” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Since Hersh’s bombshell report, which alleges that President Biden authorized the bombing of the pipelines, the response from Western governments has been muted. The White House has dismissed the report as “fiction,” and the CIA also denied any involvement.

But the US has a clear motive for the attack and sought to stop the construction of Nord Stream 2 through sanctions. Both President Biden and Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, threatened last year that the US would bring an end to Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine.

Hersh’s report said that Norway cooperated with the US on the attack, another country with a motive to sabotage the pipeline. Hersh said US Navy divers planted the explosive during NATO drills in the Baltic Sea in June 2022. On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian P-8 surveillance plane dropped a sonar buoy in the area that detonated the blast.

On September 27, 2022, representatives from Poland, Denmark, and Norway inaugurated Baltic Pipe, another natural gas pipeline that will carry gas from Norway through Denmark to Poland. For their part, the Norwegian government also denied Hersh’s report.

Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.