Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has ordered “all initiators and patrons” of the Nord Stream pipelines to “keep quiet” following the revelation that Ukraine might have been behind the 2022 attack on the infrastructure and that Poland may have been in on the scheme.
The pipelines were seen as a critical part of Germany’s energy infrastructure before their destruction, with numerous successive Berlin governments backing their continued use and expansion.
Shortly after it was put forward that Kyiv and Warsaw may have been co-conspirators regarding the attack, Tusk posted on X that those who benefited from Nord Stream were at fault.
“To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet,” he said in the August 17 post.
To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.
— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) August 17, 2024
Tusk’s comment comes in the wake of a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article detailing how the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were allegedly blown up by an action involving Ukrainian intelligence officers.
Following the WSJ story, the former chief of German intelligence (BND) August Hanning told Die Welt that the attack on Nord Stream must have been supported by Poland and have had the approval of both the Presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline had been supplying gas from Russia to Germany but the Nord Stream 2 pipeline had not yet been activated at the time of the attack.
Both pipelines had been criticised by Ukrainian and Polish politicians for bypassing both countries and for making Western Europe potentially susceptible to Russian energy blackmail.
Then-US president Donald Trump targeted Germany for insisting on going ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, arguing that in doing so Germany was boosting Russia’s economy. He attempted to impose sanctions on companies involved in the project but his successor President Joe Biden lifted those restrictions when he took office in 2021.
Supplies of gas to Germany were suspended by Russia before the explosions that deactivated Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 operations had been suspended immediately after the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.
Both Poland and Ukraine have dened any involvement in the attack. Ukraine has blamed Russia for a ‘”false flag attack,” arguing that its forces had no authority to launch such an operation.
On August 14, Poland received a European arrest warrant from Germany for the detention of a Ukrainian diver suspected of involvement in the Nord Stream attacks, although the individual is no longer living in Poland.
Many Polish politicians have celebrated the destruction of the pipelines.
Poland’s current foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has never hidden his opposition to Nord Stream. When the project was being activated in the 1990s Sikorski called it “another Ribbentrop-Molotov pact”, an allusion to the secret pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia that led to both invading Poland in September 1939.
When the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up in September 2022, Sikorski posted a photograph of the scene on X with the caption: “Thank you USA”.
The post was used by Russian diplomats at a meeting of the UN Security Council as evidence of the West being behind the attack.
German investigators have issued an international arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man they suspect of having been involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022. https://t.co/A5fws67shb
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 14, 2024
