Possibly aiming to deflect attention from Seymour Hersh’s bombshell Nord Stream report, the usual suspects in the pro-Biden media have published poorly-sourced rumors seeking to pin the blame for the Nord Stream attack on vague “pro-Ukrainian groups” not tied to anyone important. Russian embassy spokesman Andrey Ledenev pointed out how quickly the strange reports were picked up worldwide, in stark contrast to the much more detailed report by Seymour Hersh, which has been completely ignored by the same media.
The New York Times published a rambling and nearly incoherent report claiming “new intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year.”
At the same time, German pubweb ARD and leftist “Die Zeit” weekly also published their own fishy fishing expedition, citing German investigators and claiming they had identified a Ukrainian-owned Polish private yacht which was chartered by five men and a female doctor: A skipper, two divers and two dive assistants. Their identity and nationality was unclear.
The yacht allegedly set to sea Sept. 6 from Rostock, Germany and was later localized near Danish island Christiansø northeast of Bornholm, where the Nord Stream attack took place Sept. 26. Allegedly, the international team of saboteurs forgot to clear up their tracks and returned the boat with traces of explosives on the kitchen table, the German report claims. The investigators allegedly even found two fake passports used by the saboteurs.
“Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the investigators have not yet been able to find out who hired the group of suspected perpetrators. In international security circles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag operation. This means that traces could also have been deliberately laid that point to Ukraine as the culprit. However, the investigators have apparently found no evidence that confirms such a scenario,” Holger Stark writes in Die Zeit.
Seymour Hersh’s reaction to the “pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines” New York Times’ headline live on air. #Nordstream #NordstreamSabotage pic.twitter.com/fQRQSdjiR2
— polirealm (@polirealm) March 8, 2023
US Russian Embassy counselor Andrey Ledenev called the reports “an attempt to confuse those who are sincerely trying to get to the bottom of things in this egregious crime. Shift the blame from the statesmen who ordered and coordinated the attacks in the Baltic Sea to some abstract individuals. We are convinced that in the end justice will prevail. We shall spare no effort for this to happen.”
Russia has “no faith in the ‘impartiality’ of the conclusions of the US intelligence,” Ledenev said, pointing out how quickly the new, anonymously sourced articles were picked up world wide, in stark contrast to the Hersh report, which has been resoundingly ignored by all major Western media. “We noticed the mentioned article instantly got a ‘green light’ in the local information field, literally being all over the media in a heartbeat,” Ledenev said.
“This is especially noteworthy given the attempts of the local officials and journalists to blatantly silence the resonant material of the Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh on the same topic. As well as the administration’s opposition to launching a comprehensive and independent investigation into this act of international terrorism against critical energy infrastructure.”
A senior aide to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told The Guardian the government in Kyiv was “in no way involved in the attack” on Nord Stream. “In the midst of a war … Ukraine and its allies would definitely not spend resources on something that would not bring us victory directly on the battlefield. It doesn’t make any sense. But it is extremely beneficial for Russia itself to try to switch attention from the war … and try to present itself as a kind of ‘victim’,” the unnamed source claimed.
Richard Abelson
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