1). “The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage”, Mar 15, 2023, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interview Jeremy Scahill about the bombing of the Nordstream Pipeline, Democracy Now!, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7Juq9XlhI >

Note: This is a Youtube video of an Interview of Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now! A transcript is provided in Item 2).

2). “The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage”, {Transcript from Video in Item 1). above}, Mar 15, 2023, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez interview Jeremy Scahill about the bombing of the Nordstream Pipeline, Democracy Now!, at <https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/15/jeremy_scahill_nord_stream_pipeline_sabotage>

3). “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot: None of the emerging narratives surrounding the Nord Stream pipeline bombing really contradicts Seymour Hersh’s central allegation that Biden authorized the operation.”, March 10 2023, Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept, at < https://theintercept.com/2023/03/10/nord-stream-pipeline-bombing/ >

4). “SCOTT RITTER: The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up”, March 14, 2023, Scott Ritter, Consortium News, at <https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/14/scott-ritter-the-nord-stream-andromeda-cover-up/>

5). “As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story”, March 8, 2023, Joe Lauria, Consortium News, at <https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/08/as-bakhmut-falls-us-may-turn-from-ukraine-starting-with-pipeline-story />

6). “Clues Emerge In Bid to Solve Pipeline Attack.”, March 8, 2023, Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman, New York Times.

7). “A wide range of pro-Ukrainian groups operate in the shadows of the war: The new intelligence suggesting the involvement of such a group in explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines last year is extremely vague”, March 8, 2023, Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, at <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-groups.html>

~~ recommended by dmorista ~~

Introduction by dmorista: Three of the four pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 & 2 Pipeline System, that either carried natural gas, or in the case of Nord Stream 2 were built to move natural gas, from Russia to Germany, were cut by underwater explosions on Sept 26, 2022. None of the 4 pipelines was in use at the time of the explosions, but all 4 were full of natural gas that escaped into the atmosphere. The Corporate Controlled Media published various versions of the Cover Stories saying that either the Russians destroyed the pipelines themselves or that some shadowy groups of Ukrainians had accomplished the task. Finally, on Feb 8, 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article claiming that the U.S., working through the CIA and U.S. Navy trained divers had actually placed the charges on the pipelines and detonated them through some remote control method Hersh noted in the article that President Biden said at a Joint Press Conference with Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, on February 7, 2022, that if a war started between Russia and Ukraine,,m the U.S. would cut the Nord Stream Pipelines. Hersh’s article initiated a storm of on-line articles and commentary condemning him, while the main Corporate Controlled Media outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post virtually ignored Hersh’s article, despite the fact that he had worked for years as an investigative reporter at the Times.

The response from the Alternative Media was more positive. Jeremy Scahill appeared to discuss an article he wrote about the situation, for an interview on Democracy Now!, “The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage”, that is included here as the video in item 1)., and in transcript form in item 2). His article from The Intercept, “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot: …”, is posted here as Item 3). Scahill concludes that while he does not consider Hersh’s version to be proven conclusively it does conform to the facts we know, while the material from Hersh’s critics and the cover stories do not. Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector and U.S. weapons inspector, wrote an article, “SCOTT RITTER: The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up”, in which he debunks the claim that Ukrainian operatives placed the charges, using a sailboat. He pointed out that the supposed ship was nowhere near large enough or sophisticated enough to support an operation; in which over 1,000 pounds of explosives were fastened to the stout pipelines at a depth of 250 feet. A depth that would require extensive decompression equipment, for the divers attaching the explosives, and that equipment alone, was too large for the 49ft long vessel.

Joe Lauria in his article posted here as Item 5)., “As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story”, puts forward the theory that the ruling classes of the West, and their allies in the Corporate Controlled Media,yu are preparing their populations for the defeat of Ukraine. The consequences of that defeat would include a peace deal that will feature a rump state of Ukraine, minus Crimea and the South and Eastern provinces of the Donbas area.

Items 6 & 7 are New York Times articles; that include the sort of vague speculation and reporting supported by unnamed intelligence agency, government, and military figures, that suggest shadowy Ukrainian organizations are responsible for the pipelines’ destruction. Scahill noted that the only discussion of Hersh’s work in the New York Times was a couple of paragraphs that mentioned his name and the article, but did not elaborate on any of Hersh’s explosive assertions. Those passages are highlighted in paragraphs 26 and 27 of the article posted here in Item 6)., “Clues Emerge In Bid to Solve Pipeline Attack.”. Item 7, “A wide range of pro-Ukrainian groups operate in the shadows of the war: ….”, is an almost pathetic attempt by a compliant faux journalist to provide a seed to make people think about Ukrainian extremists as the perpetrators of the pipeline destruction operation. Much of the material in Items 6). and 7). is clearly intelligence agency handouts. The New York Times article in Item 6). did, to its credit, discuss some material that is not slavishly following the CIA Biden Administration story.

The standard reporting, by the Corporate Controlled Media, still suggests that Ukraine is winning the Proxy war between Russia and the U.S. / NATO supported Ukrainian forces; though as Joe Lauria notes some pessimism about the Ukrainian prospects is starting to creep in. Both situations cannot be true, a few Alternative Media sources have stated from the beginning that Ukraine’s situation and prospects were much less positive than was generally reported. The Corporate Controlled Media, that did report negative news and material about the U.S. military in the S.E. Asian Wars during the 1960s and 1970s, has now been totally tamed and bent to the will of the WarParty.

Of course, the most skeptical and solid ideologically inclined leftist thinkers and dissenters, when discussing U.S. policies, were always critical of the endless wars and covert political interference in the Global South. Now there is plenty of speculation about U.S. intentions to start a war with China, most likely around the issue of Taiwan and its relationship to mainland China. The U.S. / NATO alliance has been seriously strained by conducting the Proxy War with Russia currently being fought out in Ukraine. The most extreme Imperialist faction of the U.S. ruling class thinks they have a relatively short “window of opportunity” to defeat China militarily China is much more powerful than Russia. Military leaders in the U.S. are concerned about the depletion of ammunition and weaponry, given to Ukraine over the past year and 2 months. The mighty Industrial giant U.S., that supplied a massive part of the armaments in WW 2,, is a fading memory. The society that most closely resembles the U.S. during WW 2 today is China. Some analysts report that China has now surpassed the industrial capacity of the U.S. and the E.U. combined.

1). “The Nord Stream Bombing: Jeremy Scahill on Why U.S. Remains Most Likely Culprit in Pipeline Sabotage”, Mar 15, 2023, Amy Goodman and Juan Rodriguez interview Jeremy Scahill about the bombing of the Nordstream Pipeline, Democracy Now!, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7Juq9XlhI >

(Questions continue to swirl about how Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were damaged last year, with U.S. officials maintaining they had no role in the sabotage of the pair of Russian pipelines supplying natural gas to Europe. Journalist Jeremy Scahill, senior correspondent for The Intercept, says the Biden administration remains the most obvious suspect, even as new reporting in the U.S. and Europe has suggested possible alternatives.)

Note: This is a Youtube of an Interview of Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now! A transcript is provided in Item 2).

(Above is a graphic of the Youtube Link for Jeremy Scahill’s Interview on Democracy Now! On March 15, 2023. To watch the video go to

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q7Juq9XlhI >)

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“Questions continue to swirl about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September. Last month, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported the sabotage was carried out by the U.S. Navy with remotely triggered explosives during NATO exercises. The U.S. has denied the claim. We speak to The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill about his latest article, ‘Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot.’ ”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the Nord Stream pipeline. You recently wrote a piece in The Intercept dissecting and analyzing the Sy Hersh explosive report. Could you talk about that?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, first of all, I think it should be said that Seymour Hersh is one of the greatest generations — one of the greatest journalists in American history, with a very, very long track record of breaking stories of great consequence on American war crimes, American covert operations. And I think that that often gets lost in the shuffle in people’s confirmation bias-inspired attacks on Sy Hersh’s stories. You could argue, for sure, that a single-source story, that appears to have a bunch of details in it that are contradicted by open-source intelligence on ship movements and plane movements — they’re all legitimate questions to raise, and I don’t pretend to know the answer of what happened to the Nord Stream pipeline, and I also have my own questions about some of the citations in Sy’s reporting. But here’s what I will say with confidence: I know that if Seymour Hersh has a source that he believes has credible access to intelligence and he reports it and reports those assertions, that there is a there there, that it is worth pursuing, it is worth looking at.

So, what I tried to do in my story was give some context to what it’s like to work with confidential sources. And one thing that we know is that very few people in government have access to every detail of a covert operation or every detail of a secret program. And sometimes what happens is that sources know what they know, and they share that, but they mix it with speculation, or they mix it with things that were being discussed as a potential plan. I think it’s plausible that Hersh may have some of the details wrong, not because Sy Hersh himself is sloppy but because sources sometimes don’t delineate what they know to be true from what is speculation. It’s also possible that this was one of the plans that was being discussed within the Biden administration as part of a secret task force and that they ended up operating the plan in a different manner. There’s a number of questions that I think we should be asking.

But what I think is the central, most important assertion is that Sy Hersh has a source, that he believes is legitimate and real and has information that is true, who is asserting that the United States carried out this operation or sponsored this operation. And I think that the dismissal of Sy Hersh by so many people is reckless. It also shows a total disregard for the history of American covert operations. And it ultimately seeks to silence people who are questioning what I think is quite clearly the top suspect in this international act of terrorism, and that is the party that would have the greatest motivation to conduct this attack. And that would be United States.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to what Russian President Vladimir Putin said, the bombing of the Nord Stream carried out at the, quote, “state level.” He didn’t directly blame the United States but pointed out the U.S. had an interest in the pipelines being blown up.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Who is interested? Theoretically, the United States is interested, of course, in order to stop the supply of Russian energy carriers to the European market and supply volumes of their own, including liquefied natural gas.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Vladimir Putin, Jeremy. If you could, for people who aren’t following this closely, summarize what the major news outlets are saying, whether we’re talking about Die Zeit in Germany, a pro-Ukrainian group, Russia, whether we’re talking about The New York Times or Sy Hersh, what each is contending?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. Well, so, of course, Seymour Hersh says that this was a United States operation, that was covert in nature, although it, according to Hersh, once Joe Biden, in February — on February 7, 2022, Joe Biden has a meeting in the East Room of the White House, a press conference, with the new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. And during that press conference, Biden is asked about the Nord Stream pipeline, and he says, you know, “We will shut it down. We will get it done. We will end it. I promise you that.”

And what Hersh is saying is that once Biden said that, that the operation that was intended to be a covert operation under Title 50 of the U.S. Code, which means that if the president issues a secret presidential finding, that the U.S., for interests of its national security, has to conduct an operation and keep it secret, that under the law, the president of the United States is required to inform the Senate and House Intelligence Committees or, at a minimum, the so-called Gang of Eight, which would be the chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and then the leadership in both the Senate and the House. And what Hersh is saying is that once Biden let the cat out of the bag by sort of saying, you know, we’re going to do this — Biden, of course, didn’t say we’re going to go blow up the pipeline, but, you know, you could read into it very easily that Biden was saying, one way or the other, we’re taking this thing out — that then the CIA and others said, “Well, this can’t be a covert operation in that manner,” so they shifted it to a military operation that would fall under Title 10 of the U.S. Code. And in that case, you do not have the same congressional reporting requirements to the intelligence committees. So, according to Hersh, they were able to circumvent informing Congress because of this distinction.

Now, I talked to lawyers, including the top lawyer for the director of national intelligence under Barack Obama, Robert Litt, who was saying that even with those semantics, that this kind of an operation would fall clearly under covert action statutes, and was questioning the veracity of that claim that no one from Congress would have been informed. But all of that aside, and I think it’s just important to understand the distinctions for how covert actions are authorized — and by the way, Joe Biden, as a young senator, played a role in establishing these rules that now govern covert operations and in setting up the Intelligence Committee. He was a founding member of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the 1970s.

So, what Hersh is alleging is that this was a secret operation, with the support of the Norwegian government, and that it was done under cover of a NATO — a well-publicized NATO training operation and involved deep-sea divers who were part of the vanilla U.S. Navy, not Special Operations Command, because then, again, it would have had to be reported to members of Congress, and that they then placed the explosives on portions of the pipeline that they had identified as a particularly good place to disrupt it and sabotage it, and then they detonated it.

That was immediately attacked by a lot of commentators online, a lot of other journalists, but, interestingly, was never — and still to this moment has never gotten a fair hearing in The New York Times or The Washington Post. In fact, last week, when The New York Times published a story, that reverberated around the world, asserting that U.S. intelligence believes that — or, is zeroing in on what they called a pro-Ukrainian group that may have been involved with attacking or sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline, they for the first time mentioned Seymour Hersh’s report, and it was in the 23rd graph of their story, and they didn’t even make any assertion of what Sy actually said. They were mentioning it as though Sy had just done a blog post referencing Joe Biden’s, you know, perceived public threat.

And I think what was clear to me, as a follower of both The New York Times and U.S. covert action, is that there are elements within the U.S. intelligence community who are spinning this story, and they’re doing it for one of two reasons: either to distract from Hersh’s report or because this is representative of some sort of a deception operation or an attempt to put together a false flag, where you have the appearance that these individuals did it, and that is intended to mask the actual sponsor of the operation.

And at the same time that The New York Times does its story, a consortium of German journalists from different publications, including Die Zeit, published a story that was not based on intelligence reporting but was based on the federal criminal investigation that Germany is doing into the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. And they then offered more details from the German investigation, that there was a private boat that had been rented by a — from a Ukrainian-owned company and that explosives had been transported by land over Poland and through Germany and placed onto this, what essentially was just a kind of sailboat with a 75 horsepower motor, and that this boat carried six individuals — some divers and a doctor — and that they went out into the sea and that they were the ones that actually placed the explosives on it.

Now, what’s interesting, Amy — and you asked Sy Hersh about this on his show about some of the open-source intelligence researchers who called into question parts of his story — some of those same people then started to go to town in dissecting the inconsistencies of the reporting from Die Zeit and the findings, as they were relayed in the papers in Germany, from the German Federal Police about how such a small team of divers would have been able to do this, how they would have transported the volume of explosives. You know, we’re talking about hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of explosives that were alleged to have been used in this operation, a military level of explosive devices. So, I don’t know that this Andromeda, this ship, was or wasn’t involved with it, but in many ways it really reeks of a disinformation operation. It’s totally plausible that these individuals on that boat were involved in some capacity. But even the German defense minister himself, in response to these reports, has said that he would give equal weight to the theory that they were involved with the attack and that they were — or that they were part of a false flag operation.

Now, I would say the top suspect in this should just logically be the United States. Many of the same principles that I could offer in analyzing this private boat scenario could also apply to Russia. It’s just that the case that Russia would have had the motive to do this is much flimsier than the case that the United States would have or that Ukraine would have. What I think is a theory that — and again, this is just speculation on my part, but it’s informed speculation — is that I wouldn’t be shocked if we at some point learn that the United States sponsored this operation using deniable assets for plausible deniability and that some elements of Ukrainian forces, whether they’re private or official, were involved or if not carried out the operation. I think that would be the most logical line of inquiry. I’m not saying I know that to be true. I’m saying if I was running an investigation on this, I would be looking at who benefits and who has the capacity to do such a sophisticated operation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jeremy, in line with that issue of the sophisticated operation, I don’t know if you saw the piece that Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector, wrote in Consortium News yesterday. But he totally debunks this idea that this small boat, as you say, could have been involved in this, not only because of the number — the amount of explosives necessary to destroy those pipelines, which were highly reinforced in concrete, as well, but he also says that they were at 240 feet below the level of the water, and that he says a rule of thumb is that decompression takes approximately one day per 100 feet of sea water plus a day. This means that the team of divers would have required three days of decompression per dive. But to decompress, you need a decompression chamber. And if there were two divers involved, they would have to have had two decompression chambers and all the oxygen necessary, and it’s impossible to have fit all that stuff on this little boat. So he says that it is clearly, from his perspective, a cover story to hide who really was involved. I’m wondering your thoughts about that.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, we don’t even need to cite Scott Ritter on those points. I mean, you’ve had naval warfare experts that have called into question almost every single part of that narrative, the narrative meaning that the actual divers were on this small ship and went down to place the explosives. I mean, if you speak to people who are experts at diving, either on the civilian end or, more relevant, on the military end, it really does not add up.

And so, then the question becomes: Why is this story being pushed? You know, it’s interesting. This hasn’t gotten much play in the United States, but in European media, there’s a lot of reporting indicating that a name is going to come out about the person who potentially sponsored this component of the operation. And I think that the fact that the German defense minister is stating that it’s like 50/50 that this thing was a false flag is a pretty good indication that that dominant narrative that’s been pushed, that this was sort of the attackers and they used this ship and they did it by themselves, it just doesn’t pass the smell test. So, you know, you don’t even need to get into political rhetoric or having any other theory about it just to say the facts just don’t make any sense on a technical level that that specific ship could have been the sole party responsible for blowing this up.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you for being with us, senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and the book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, on which the Oscar-nominated film Dirty Wars is based. We’ll link to your new piece, “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot.”

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3). “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot: None of the emerging narratives surrounding the Nord Stream pipeline bombing really contradicts Seymour Hersh’s central allegation that Biden authorized the operation.”, March 10 2023, Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept, at < https://theintercept.com/2023/03/10/nord-stream-pipeline-bombing/ >

26–33 minutes, March 10 2023, Jeremy Scahill, The Intercept,

In the month since veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report alleging that President Joe Biden personally authorized a covert action to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines, we’ve seen a frenzy of speculation, detailed dissection of Hersh’s specific assertions, and the emergence of competing narratives both supporting and denouncing the report.

The question of whether Hersh’s story is accurate — either in whole or in part — is of monumental significance, and there are some issues related to this story that have not received as much attention as they deserve. Among these are questions surrounding the legal and constitutional framework the Biden administration would have used if, as Hersh’s source alleges, Biden directly ordered the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines. There is also an emerging counternarrative to Hersh’s reporting from U.S. intelligence that warrants scrutiny, both on its merits and for how it might relate to Hersh’s story.

“A Pro-Ukrainian Group”

On March 7, the New York Times and the German newspaper Die Zeit both published stories that thicken the plot. The Times story was based on a narrative clearly being pushed by U.S. intelligence sources that “a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack.” The Times asserted that a “review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation.” The report was spartan in its specifics, used no named sources, and seemed reminiscent of other efforts by anonymous U.S. intelligence sources to launder a narrative under the guise of a news scoop. “U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains,” the report said. “They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.”

The Times report was almost immediately contested by reporting in CNN and the Washington Post, downplaying the certainty of U.S. officials that the intelligence was accurate. An unnamed senior administration official told the Washington Post, “My understanding is that we don’t find this conclusive.” The Ukrainian government has denied any connection to the operation, saying it “absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream 2.”

Die Zeit’s investigation, conducted with public broadcasters ARD and SWR, was based on a German criminal probe led by the federal police. Die Zeit reports that its journalists identified the boat that was allegedly used in the operation. “It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman,” according to the report. “The group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear.” They allegedly “used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.”

In response to the story, Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius said, “We need to clearly differentiate whether it was a Ukrainian group that acted on the orders of Ukraine or … without the government’s knowledge.”

These new reports offer no concrete evidence or credible explanation for how this alleged group may have conducted the sabotage operation.

Die Zeit’s story appears to challenge Hersh’s central narrative, which offered a mass of detailed information about how exactly the U.S. allegedly carried out its attack on the pipeline, including details about the specific forces and ships involved in the operation and a technical description of how they planted and detonated the explosives. But these new reports do not actually contradict Hersh’s story, because they offer no concrete evidence or credible explanation for how this alleged group may have conducted the sabotage operation.

The German report, written by Holger Stark, made no allegation of any nation-state involvement in the attack but noted that “it is not excluded that this is also a false flag operation,” which “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.” In an interview with a German radio station, Pistorius said he cannot rule out a “false flag” operation “to blame pro-Ukrainian groups and make it look that way.” That probability, he asserted, was “equally high.”

Researchers specializing in open-source intelligence, or OSINT, have loudly concluded that Hersh’s reporting does not add up and is easily debunked by tracking publicly available data on the movements of ships, aircraft, and other vessels at the time of the alleged operation. Hersh has summarily dismissed these critics, asserting that U.S. intelligence understands quite well the need to circumvent such OSINT vulnerabilities and had taken measures — including, perhaps, the disabling of location transponders — to ensure the integrity of the operation. “If you’re in the intelligence community, you’ve been running covert ops for years,” Hersh said, “certainly, the first thing you look at is how to take care of open-source people, make them think what happened isn’t happening.”

Some of the doubts and criticism aimed at Hersh’s piece, especially the fact that it appears to rely on a single source, are valid, but Hersh has a long track record of breaking major stories about covert operations and U.S. war crimes. And he has frequently proved his critics wrong. Hersh’s narrative also has the benefit of abundant public circumstantial evidence in the form of statements by the president and his advisers appearing to threaten to take out the pipeline and then gloating once it was destroyed. The U.S. had the motive and the means to carry out the operation.

When Hersh contacted the Biden administration for comment on his story, a White House spokesperson said, “This is false and complete fiction,” while the CIA told him, “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

The New York Times has not published serious reporting — or any reporting — on the substance of Hersh’s allegations or the denials from the White House and other government agencies. But in its piece on the “pro-Ukrainian group” the Times mentions Hersh’s report in the 23rd graph of the story. “Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s preinvasion threat to ‘bring an end’ to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials,” the report said. “U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.”

In an interview on “The Daily,” a New York Times podcast, one of the reporters on the story, Julian Barnes, was asked if he knows who did the bombing. “Yeah, we think we do know,” he replied. But later in the nearly 30-minute discussion, he said, “I should be very clear that we know really very little, right? This group remains mysterious and it remains mysterious, not just to us, but also to the U.S. government officials that we have spoken to. They know that the people involved were either Ukrainian or Russian or a mix. They know that they are not affiliated with the Ukrainian government, but they know they’re also anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine.”

Barnes described the evolution of the pro-Ukraine story as beginning with the Times reporters speaking to U.S. intelligence officials. He said that initially the Times had been focusing its probe into the bombing on the Russian and Ukrainian governments, but that it was “just hitting dead end after dead end,” so the reporters “started asking a different question: ‘Could this have been done by nonstate actors? Could this have been done by a group of individuals who were not working for a government?’” Barnes added, “The more we talked to officials who had access to intelligence, the more we saw this theory gaining traction.” Barnes did not mention Hersh’s story on the podcast.

Despite the claim that this story emerged from a speculative hunch on the part of the Times reporters, it certainly appears to be an effort by some forces within U.S. intelligence to rework and spin the previous narrative that sought to imply that Russia itself had blown up the pipeline. Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and other nations have spent months investigating the explosion. The Times story could be an indication that after doing forensic and other investigations, Washington’s allies do not believe that Russia was behind the attack. Several European media outlets, including the Times of London, reported that European investigators zeroed in on the alleged pro-Ukrainian group very soon after the explosion, despite the fact that it only hit the news media in the past week. It may turn out that this is precisely what happened, and that the U.S. had nothing to do with the operation. But it would be unwise — and would require a complete disregard of U.S. history — to assume without evidence that the inferences of anonymous U.S. officials are genuine.

“I don’t know what happened here but it would be naive and irresponsible for journalists to take U.S. intel agencies’ claims at face value,” said Jameel Jaffer, a former lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who spent years battling the Bush and Obama administrations over issues of secrecy and national security.

Floating Narratives

If the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was, as Hersh alleges, directed by the U.S., then the leaked suggestion that the culprits were a “pro-Ukrainian group” could indicate a nascent effort at floating a cover story. There is also the possibility that some elements within the U.S. government ran a covert operation using deniable assets, such as Ukrainian “partisans” operating with fake passports. Further, “pro-Ukrainian group” is so vague that it could apply to an infinite number of actors, including former U.S. military or intelligence personnel or those of an allied nation. Die Zeit reported that the alleged perpetrators rented a yacht from a Polish company owned by two Ukrainians. According to the report, the group failed to clean the yacht they allegedly used in the operation, leading investigators to discover residue from explosives on a table in the cabin. This is either unbelievably sloppy tradecraft, evidence of total amateurism, or an intentional “clue” left with the intent to deceive. The U.S. or another nation could have used such a team as a patsy operation to mislead investigators and cover the tracks of the actual perpetrators.

There are recent precedents for foreign actors taking credit for U.S. operations to conceal Washington’s involvement.

No one has claimed responsibility for this attack, but there are recent precedents for foreign actors taking credit for U.S. operations to conceal Washington’s involvement. This was the case when President Barack Obama authorized a cruise missile attack in Yemen in December 2009, which killed more than three dozen people, most of them women and children. The Yemeni government announced it had conducted the strikes, a claim later proven false when a journalist photographed the remnants of U.S. cluster munitions. In fact, this practice of cloaking the U.S. role in drone and other airstrikes in Yemen was common during the Obama administration.

European news outlets have been aggressively pursuing the story of the private boat that U.S. and German intelligence have suggested was used by the “pro-Ukrainian group.” Some of the open-source researchers who criticized Hersh’s version of events have also identified inconsistencies and problems with the initial reporting on this new theory. Among these are questions of how such a small vessel could have transported the quantity of explosives allegedly used in the attack on the Nord Stream, the extreme difficulty such a small team on a yacht would face in pulling off the operation, and the perplexing narrative about the alleged land route they used to deliver the explosives to the ship. Some analysts have also raised doubt that a small team of divers would have the technical capacity to have pulled off such a complicated and deep dive or why they would choose a difficult access point to place the explosives.

I am not saying I believe any specific theory about the Nord Stream explosion at present, including Hersh’s. But I am not about to denounce Hersh’s reporting. He has repeatedly been accused of being wrong, only later to be proven right. That was true of My Lai, it was true of the CIA’s domestic spying in the 1970s, and it was true of the secret plans to manufacture a “weapons of mass destruction” threat in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and countless other stories throughout his career. I am confident that if Hersh publishes a story, he believes that it is true and that he has a source or sources he has deemed reliable who are providing information. That does not mean that he or his sources are always right about every detail. In that sense, the ultimate question of credibility for Hersh’s story rests exclusively on his source’s level of direct access to the planning and their personal firsthand knowledge about the execution of the operation.

Like many reasonable observers who understand the history of U.S. covert actions, I am following the developments closely, with an open mind. It is possible for a journalist to get many details correct while also being fed some unreliable information by sources who are passing off speculation as fact. This is one of the major risks of single-sourced reporting, no matter how reliable the source is. Very few people in government are privy to every single detail of a covert operation, and I know from experience that sometimes sources know a lot about some aspects of a program or operation but are trying to fill in the blanks about the aspects they do not know directly. This is not done out of malice or with an intent to deceive, but because that’s how many people operate. Sometimes it is difficult to parse fact from speculation with sensitive sources who are reluctant to talk, especially if the source does not make clear what they know to be true and what they suspect to be true.

It is also possible that sources themselves have been fed bad or incomplete information and pass it along sincerely believing it to be true. There are many instances too where assertions confirmed by more than one source and published by major publications with substantial resources turn out to be false. Despite getting some details wrong, it is still possible for a reporter to get the overarching conclusion right.

It remains conceivable that Hersh correctly identified the sponsor of the Nord Stream attack, even if some of the details provided by his source were speculative, inaccurate, or based on outdated operational plans.

U.S. President Joe Biden, right, during a news conference with Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Feb. 7 2022. Biden met with Scholz to discuss the situation with Ukraine amid questions over Germany's resolve to stand firm against Russia. Photographer: Leigh Vogel/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(Caption: President Joe Biden, right, during a news conference with Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 2022. Photo: Leigh Vogel/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Oversight and Authority

There is another important set of questions to consider: If the U.S. did carry out the strike on the Nord Stream with Biden’s direct authorization, under what authority would the operation have been conducted? Under what legal basis would Biden and his administration have to keep even senior congressional leadership out of the loop and then blatantly lie about it to the public?

It’s worth noting that as a young senator, Biden played a role in creating the permanent congressional intelligence committees and in crafting laws regulating the oversight of the CIA and covert actions in the aftermath of the Nixon-era lawlessness.

First, let’s review what Hersh reported about the authorities at play in the alleged operation. “The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. ‘This is not kiddie stuff,’ the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, ‘It’s an act of war.’”

According to Hersh, things changed after remarks Biden made on February 7, 2022, as he stood next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the East Room at the White House. “If Russia invades … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” said Biden. “We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” Hersh’s source said the framework for the operation shifted to a military umbrella because senior CIA officers determined that destroying the pipeline “no longer could be considered a covert option because the President just announced that we knew how to do it.” Hersh writes, “The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, ‘There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it — but it still had to be secret.’”

“There is supposed to be at least some congressional notification of any covert action.”

I consulted several constitutional law scholars and experts on U.S. covert actions to explore the legal framework within which the Biden administration would have needed to operate to carry out such an operation. All of the sources I spoke with said it would be a serious violation of law if such a covert action were not briefed to at least some senior U.S. lawmakers. At a minimum, the operation would need to be reported to the so-called Gang of Eight — the House speaker and minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders, the chair and ranking members of both intelligence committees — either beforehand or, if necessary for the integrity of the operation, shortly thereafter. In that case, the president would be required to provide an explanation as to why Congress was not briefed ahead of time. In rare cases, presidents have chosen to brief only four members of Congress, though the practice has no basis in U.S. statute. “There is supposed to be at least some congressional notification of any covert action,” said Steven Aftergood, who served as director of the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists from 1991-2021. “If notification is not provided in advance, it must still be given in ‘a timely fashion.’ Failure to do so would be a violation of law.”

Within the U.S. laws governing military and intelligence operations, there are gray areas. Title 50 of the U.S. code sets out the rules and structures for intelligence operations, while Title 10 covers military actions. The code under which a particular operation is performed has serious implications for oversight and accountability. A covert action requires the drafting of a presidential “finding,” or memorandum of notification, and the White House must brief the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on its contents. This briefing must occur before the covert action unless there are “extraordinary circumstances.” The requirements for congressional involvement were established to prevent scandals such as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and other dubious CIA operations.

Military doctrine defines another class of activities, “clandestine operations,” in which the point of secrecy is to protect the integrity of the mission, not to conceal its sponsor, the U.S. government. The military may conduct operations that are both covert and clandestine, but these are rare. Unlike covert actions, clandestine operations do not require a presidential finding if “future hostilities” are “anticipated” in the country where they are taking place. Nor is the administration required to report the operation to Congress. Such operations are defined as “traditional military activities,” or TMAs, and offer the intelligence committees no real-time oversight rights. Under U.S. law, the military is not required to disclose the specific actions of an operation, but the U.S. role in the “overall operation” should be “apparent” or eventually “acknowledged.”

Hersh’s source said the “covert action” was officially changed to a U.S. military operation after Biden’s public threat and that it used regular U.S. Navy divers instead of those from U.S. Special Operations Command “whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance,” thus eliminating the reporting requirement to the intelligence committees. “What qualifies as TMA has long been a subject of push and pull between Congress and the executive,” said University of Houston constitutional law scholar Emily Berman. “So the bottom line is that what rules apply would depend on which authority the President relied on to carry out the mission, which will often not be evident.”

“To the extent that ‘traditional military activities’ can look a lot like covert actions, congressional notification is only required under Title 50 (covert action) operations, not Title 10 (military) ones,” explained Melinda Haas, an assistant professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, in an email. “It isn’t possible to know up front, however, whether a certain behavior is considered a ‘covert action.’”

The military, while not subject to the select committees on intelligence, does have its own reporting requirements to the Senate and House Armed Services committees. While there is a debate about what sort of congressional oversight would be required if the action was done under a military umbrella, it would be brazen for Biden’s administration and the Pentagon leadership to refuse to do so. Even the notoriously secretive and anti-oversight George W. Bush administration briefed four members of Congress, including Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., in January 2003 about the existence of CIA torture videos. It is also true that the CIA subsequently spied illegally on Senate torture investigators.

Robert Litt, the former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, told me that he thought it was unlikely that the U.S. carried out the operation, but that if it did so, regardless of which U.S. forces performed such an operation, it would still “fall within a well-established statutory framework for covert action.” Litt said, “If a ‘highly classified intelligence operation’ is intended to affect conditions abroad and not to be acknowledged, it is a covert action under the law, and has to be treated as such. I don’t think this would be considered to fall within the traditional military activity exemption even though that may be what [Hersh’s] source is imprecisely referring to.”

If, as Hersh’s source alleges, no members of Congress were read into this operation, it would mean that Biden essentially adopted an Iran-Contra-style strategy of boxing out legislative oversight entirely, potentially setting himself up for a public scandal of epic proportions. There is, however, precedent for this. A 1986 memo prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan administration argued that the president was “within his authority in maintaining the secrecy” of a covert operation “from Congress until such time as he believed that disclosure to Congress would not interfere with the success of the operation.”

While this is not unfathomable in light of U.S. history, that likelihood seems low when you look at the vast number of agencies and people within the U.S. government — including an interagency working group with people from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury departments — who were allegedly working on the plans. Not to mention a foreign government and a cover story of a highly publicized NATO training exercise. This would mean mid-level U.S. government bureaucrats and foreign officials were read into the operation, but not senior members of Congress with statutory oversight authorities and sworn secrecy oaths.

“I believe that if this activity had been done by the U.S., it is almost certain that at least the Gang of Eight was informed, and by now probably the full committees as well,” said Litt. “Given the requirement of congressional briefing, the likelihood of leaks, and the political situation in Washington, I would doubt that the president would take the risk of actually lying had this been a U.S. operation.” Litt added: “My bottom line is that I think it is highly unlikely that if the U.S. did this Congress was not briefed.”

Beyond the issue of whether Congress was informed of the alleged operation, it’s hard to imagine a scenario, if Hersh’s source is accurate, in which no one involved eventually confirms at least parts of Hersh’s reporting, or intentionally or unwittingly leaks details and backs up the claims. According to Hersh’s source, there were dissenters within the CIA and State Department who said, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”

Hersh has been confronted with this exact question before, including after his 2015 story challenging the official narrative of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was published. “How many people do you think in the American government in the years 2001, 2002, 2003 leading up to the late March attack on Iraq knew that the government was misrepresenting the intelligence on the WMD?” Hersh asked in an interview with NPR’s On the Media, adding that potentially thousands of government employees and contractors also knew that the National Security Agency was engaged in warrantless collection of the communications of American citizens prior to Edward Snowden’s revelations, but kept silent. “We’ve demonstrated that you can cow the bureaucracy, you can cow people to an extraordinary length in this society to the length where nobody’s going to go public on it,” Hersh added.

If the U.S. did blow up the pipeline, it could be that the administration did in fact inform some congressional leaders and they are assisting in concealing the operation. “I don’t know of any rule that would prevent the President from denying involvement in an operation that was designed to remain unacknowledged, as covert actions are,” said Berman.

“As for lying to the public, I’m not aware of any law that would prevent the President from doing that (there is certainly plenty of recent precedent for presidential prevarication), although more typically the approach is when asked about a covert action is not to comment,” Litt wrote in an email. He added that “the military’s position is that they will not affirmatively lie about military action.”

Regardless of the U.S. military’s official position on lying about its activities, it is undeniable that military officials have lied or misled the public at various points throughout U.S. history, including the recent case of an August 2021 drone strike in Afghanistan that killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children. Whether it is lying or misdirecting the public in the Nord Stream case obviously depends on the veracity of the information provided by Hersh’s source. When the intent is to deceive an “enemy” nation or hostile force, rather than the U.S. public or Congress, the military has extensive guidelines for doing so.

Aftergood points out that there is no U.S. law or rule prohibiting the government from promoting a false alternative explanation to conceal an operation. “This is an established practice in military operations and intelligence activities where it is often known as ‘cover and deception,’” he said. “Sometimes, in order to maintain the operational security of X, you have to declare that it is actually Y.”

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4). “SCOTT RITTER: The Nord Stream-Andromeda Cover Up”, March 14, 2023, Scott Ritter, Consortium News, at <https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/14/scott-ritter-the-nord-stream-andromeda-cover-up/>

U.S. intelligence was too quick to leak information about the German investigation to The New York Times. It raises the distinct impression that the real culprit is nervous about the investigative work of Seymour Hersh.

{Caption: Divers taking a safety stop at 5 metres. (Oetzipopoetzi, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons) }

By Scott Ritter Special to Consortium News

Back in 2000, the television series “Andromeda” premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, “Andromeda,” frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history.

The series ran five years.

Fast forward to the present.

History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who openly confessed his intent to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream pipeline system which delivered Russian natural gas to Europe through four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, consisting of two pipelines each).

Since then, the Biden White House was compelled to deny the president’s stated intent after an explosive report by Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh detailed damning information which, if true (and there is no reason to suspect it’s not) casts the responsibility for a series of underwater explosions that took place on Sept. 26, 2022, on Biden himself.

Hersh’s report was ignored by the mainstream media in the United States, with neither The New York Times, for whom Seymour Hersh wrote on national security issues for many years, nor The Washington Post even hinting that the greatest living investigative journalist had broken a blockbuster story.

{Caption: Gene Roddenberry circa 1976. (Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons) }

Enter the “Andromeda” — not the spaceship of the eponymous television series, but rather a Bavaria C50 15-meter (49-foot) yacht based out of the German Baltic port city of Rostock. On March 7 — nearly a month after Hersh self-published his article on Substack — a team of German reporters from the ARD capital studio, Kontraste, Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Die Zeit collaboratively reported that they had uncovered the existence of “the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation.”

The boat was “a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians.” According to the story, “the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people.”

The name of the yacht was “The Andromeda.”

According to the German reporting, the team — five men, consisting of a ship captain, two primary divers, two supporting divers and a female doctor — used the Andromeda to transport the team, along with the explosives used to destroy the pipelines, to the scene of the crime. The boat was returned to Rostock in “an uncleaned condition,” allowing German law enforcement officials, who carried out a search of the vessel between Jan. 8-11, to detect “traces of explosives” on a table in the ship’s cabin.

The same day the German reporting on the new Nord Stream attack narrative broke, The New York Times ran a front-page story entitled “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, US Officials Say.”

For the first time, The New York Times referred to Hersh’s reporting, writing, “Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden,” before closing with “U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.”

Map of the explosions caused at the Nord Stream pipelines on Sept. 26, 2022. (FactsWithoutBias1, CC-By-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

As if echoing the Biden White House denials, The New York Times led off with this:

“New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe” (emphasis added.)

The New York Times, it seems, was more than happy about proceeding with its own anonymous intelligence sources, while dismissing Hersh’s.

The problem with both the German reporting and that of The New York Times (whose source was clearly referring to the same data reported by the German reporters) is that the Andromeda narrative doesn’t hold water.

Take, for instance, the Tom Clancy-like tale of derring-do that has four allegedly Ukraine-affiliated divers defy physiology by conducting dives that would require the use of a decompression chamber for them to survive an ascent of 240 feet (the depth of the Nord Stream pipelines that were destroyed). A rule of thumb is that decompression takes approximately one day per 100 feet of seawater plus a day.

Marina in Rostock, Germany. (Beauwell, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

This means that the team of divers would have required three days of decompression per dive. But to decompress, one needs a decompression chamber. For a dive involving two divers, the Andromeda would have to have been outfitted with either a two-person Class A decompression chamber, or two single-person Class B chambers, as well as the number of large oxygen bottles needed to operate these chambers over time. \

A simple examination of the interior cabin space of the Bavarian C50 yacht would quickly dispossess one of any notion that either option was viable.

Simply put — no decompression chamber, no dive, no story.

‘Traces’ of High Explosives

There is another aspect of the story to probe. According to the German reporting, law enforcement officials detected “traces” of high explosives on the tables in the cabin of the Andromeda.

According to the Swedish Prosecution Authority, in a statement released on Nov. 19, 2022, Swedish investigators discovered “traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects that were found” at the site of the explosions.

These explosives, according to a Nov. 22, 2022, report issued by Nord Stream AG, the Swiss-based parent company that owned the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, produced “technogenic [i.e., “of or pertaining to a process or substance created by human technology”] craters with a depth of 3 to 5 meters” separated “by a distance of about 248 meters.”

“The section of the pipe between the craters is destroyed, the radius of pipe fragments dispersion is at least 250 meters,” the report noted.

Nord Stream AG head office in Zug, Switzerland. (Alexey M, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

In a report to the United Nations, both Denmark and Sweden said that the damage done to the Nord Stream pipelines was caused by blasts equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive.”

It should be noted that underwater pipelines like those used in Nord Stream are designed to withstand proximal explosions from devices up to several hundred kilograms in size. Indeed, in locations such as the Baltic Sea, where unexploded military ordnance from multiple world wars abounds, the threat of a drifting device striking a pipeline and detonating is quite real.

Computer modeling shows that a 600-kilogram high explosive charge detonated approximately 5 meters from a 34mm-thick steel pipeline filled with gas would not compromise the structural integrity of the pipeline.

A piece of Nord Stream pipe on public display in Kotka, Finland in 2017. (Vuo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

At the location of the explosions, the Nord Stream pipelines consisted of 26.8 mm steel pipes with an addition 33.2 mm of concrete coating, for a total thickness of 60 mm. The weight of a single pipe section was over 11 tons.

In short, a standard high-explosive charge of several hundred kilograms would not be sufficient to cause the destruction that occurred on the Nord Stream pipeline.

Enter Hersh, who reported that the explosives used were “shaped charges.”

With a shaped charge, the energy of the explosion is focused in one direction, usually by creating a concave shape in the explosive that is them lined with a metal sheet, so that it usually achieves an armor- and/or concrete-penetrating effect.

Without getting too technical, the design of an underwater shaped charge that would be sufficient to penetrate concrete-lined steel pipe at a depth of 240 feet is not common knowledge. The charge would have to be prepared by qualified explosives experts and ideally tested prior to being employed operationally to validate the design and functionality of the device.

These are not tasks undertaken by a small ad hoc team of Ukrainian underwater saboteurs, but rather state-sponsored actors with access to military grade explosives and testing facilities.

Strike two for the German reporting.

But the most glaring deficiency in the German reporting deals with the detection of “trace explosive” onboard the Andromeda. This information would identify the precise explosive used. Moreover, when compared and contrasted with the “trace explosive” found by the Swedes at the location of the Nord Stream attacks, it could provide a clear linkage between the Andromeda and the attacks.

But Sweden has sealed the files of its investigation into the Nord Stream attack on national security grounds, meaning that it will not cooperate with Germany to see if the explosive traces found at the scene of the Nord Stream crime match those onboard the Andromeda.

The obvious reason behind this decision: because the two traces won’t match. One — the Swedish sample — points to the culprit. The other — the Andromeda sample — is evidence of a cover up.

Strike three, and you’re out.

The German government’s crude effort to manufacture an alternative narrative regarding who attacked the Nord Stream pipeline fails the smell test — in short, it stinks. The holes in this story are such that even the most gifted screenwriters could not turn this Andromeda tale of changing history into something remotely believable. In short, Gene Roddenberry would not be impressed.

Moreover, the fact that the U.S. intelligence community was quick to leak information about the German investigation to The New York Times appears to be de facto evidence of U.S. complicity in this cover up.

And the reason for this cover up is quite clear: the Germans and Americans both fear the reporting being done by Hersh.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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If the Donbass city of Bakhmut falls to the Russians the U.S. may need to save face in order to reverse course in Ukraine, writes Joe Lauria.

{Caption: Biden and Zelensky in November 2021. (President of Ukraine/Wikimedia Commons) }

On its face, The New York Times article yesterday, “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say,” appears intended to exonerate both the U.S. and Ukrainian governments from any involvement in the destruction last September of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany.

The thrust of the Times article is that Ukrainians unaffiliated with the Kiev government were the ones who did it, according to the newspapers often cited, unnamed “U.S. officials.”

But a closer examination of the piece reveals layers of nuance that do not dismiss that the Ukrainian government may have had something to do with the sabotage after all.

The story quotes anonymous European officials who say a state had to be involved in the sophisticated underwater operation. The Times goes out of it way to say more than once that that state was not the United States. And while the second paragraph of the story says categorically that the state is not Ukraine either, the article then leaves the door open to possible Ukrainian government involvement:

“U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services. [Emphasis mine.]

The Times then makes clear what the consequences would be for the pro-Ukraine “coalition” that Washington has built in the combined West if there was Ukrainian government involvement.

“Officials said there were still enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired. But officials said it might constitute the first significant lead to emerge from several closely guarded investigations, the conclusions of which could have profound implications for the coalition supporting Ukraine.

Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.”

The Times further develops the theme that involvement by the Ukrainian government could destroy the international support for Kiev the United States has built, as well as the immense public backing for Ukraine that the U.S.-led information war has developed.

The Washington Post, which yesterday ran a similar story, reported that the Ukrainian government denied any involvement in the attack. “Ukraine absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream 2,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, the top adviser to Zelensky, questioning why his country would conduct an operation that “destabilizes the region and will divert attention from the war, which is categorically not beneficial to us.”

Distancing Begins

The newspaper here is allowing U.S. officials to begin distancing the U.S. from Ukraine, claiming Washington has limited influence on Kiev, despite years of evidence to the contrary. The piece appears to be preparing the Western public for an abrupt about face in Ukraine because of a litany of Ukrainian operations the U.S. says it opposed. It is worth quoting the Times at length here:

“Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

U.S. officials and intelligence agencies acknowledge that they have limited visibility into Ukrainian decision-making.

Despite Ukraine’s deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war.

The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border.

But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services.

One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist.

Kyiv denied any involvement but U.S. intelligence agencies eventually came to believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called “elements” of the Ukrainian government. In response to the finding, the Biden administration privately rebuked the Ukrainians and warned them against taking similar actions.

The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream operation, there was hushed speculation — and worry — in Washington that parts of the Ukrainian government might have been involved in that operation as well.“

Of course all this is not to say that the United States did not conduct the Nord Stream sabotage just as Seymour Hersh has reported and yet still cynically blames Ukraine. (Hersh ridiculed the Times story in an email to Consortium News, which sought his comment.)

In directing attention towards the Ukrainian government’s possible culpability, U.S. intelligence gets a twofer: it deflects blame from the U.S. and prepares the public for the United States to justify abandoning Ukraine after all the U.S. has invested in its adventure to weaken Russia and topple its government through an economic, information, and proxy war, all of which have failed.

A consensus is forming among Western leaders that the war against Russia in Ukraine is lost. Thus Washington would have to save face to pull off such a reversal of policy. Insinuating that Ukraine blew up the pipelines of its ally Germany could help the U.S. climb down from its strident position in support of Ukraine.

German Media Also Blames Ukraine on Same Day

Scholz and Biden pose for photos in Oval Office last Friday before private one hour meeting without aides. (White House)

On the same day of The New York Times story yesterday, a joint investigation by a major German newspaper, Die Zeit, and the ARD broadcast network, also reported that the pipeline attack was linked to Ukraine. Die Zeit reports, according to a machine translation:

“The German investigative authorities have apparently made a breakthrough in solving the attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. After joint research by the ARD capital studio, the ARD political magazine Kontraste, SWR and ZEIT, it was possible to largely reconstruct how and when the explosive attack was prepared in the course of the investigation. Accordingly, traces lead in the direction of Ukraine.”

Just like the Times report, Die Zeit also hedges its reporting, saying that “investigators have not yet found any evidence as to who ordered the destruction.” It might not be credible to immediately blame Ukraine. The sources for these articles may be employing a tactic to gradually prepare the public for more definitive blame later. Die Zeit does provide a level of detail missing from the Times report, however. The investigation

“managed to identify the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman. Accordingly, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear. The culprits used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.”

That both articles appeared on the same day in major U.S. and German publications (including The Washington Post) might indicate a degree of coordination between U.S. and German intelligence. On Friday, just four days before the articles appeared, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made an unusual trip from Berlin to Washington, where he immediately went to the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden.

No aides were present in the Oval Office with the two men. The meeting lasted just over an hour. There was no press conference afterward and Scholz did not allow press on his plane. He returned to the airport after the meeting to fly back to Berlin. Clearly the two men did not want to discuss a sensitive matter over the phone or in a video-link.

Western Leaders Already Say Ukraine Can’t Win

The Times was fed this piece from U.S. intelligence as stories continue to be leaked showing Western leaders do not believe Ukraine can win the war, despite their public pronouncements, and that Kiev must cut its losses and seek a settlement with Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported 11 days ago:

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner last month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.

According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.

Bakhmut: a Turning Point

A building burns in Bakhmut City, Sept. 15, 2022. (Ministry of Defense of Ukraine)

A major turning point in the war that would force a huge decision for Washington may come if Russia can complete its military takeover of Bakhmut.

The battle for the city in Donbass has been raging since last summer and has intensified in the past weeks. Russia has nearly encircled the entire city trapping an estimated 10,000 Ukrainian troops inside. Ukraine had repeatedly played down the importance of Bakhmut, but nevertheless has continually sent in droves of soldiers to their death. Bakhmut is an important hub in Ukraine’s defense of Donbass.

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Zelensky at last admitted Bakhmut’s vital importance to Ukraine. “We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “That’s why our guys are standing there.”

The fall of Bakhmut to Russia would be a major humiliation for Zelensky and Ukraine, as well as for the United States and Europe. The U.S. would have a major choice to make: continue to escalate the war with the danger that it could lead to a NATO-Russia confrontation that could go nuclear, or press Ukraine to absorb its losses and seek a settlement.

Russia however would then be in a position to dictate terms: possibly recognition of four eastern Ukrainian oblasts as part of Russia after referendums there voted to join the Russian Federation; Ukraine agreeing to be a neutral nation that will not join NATO; demilitarization of Ukraine and disbanding of neo-nazi units.

Portraying Ukraine as an unworthy partner that blew up German pipelines might help minimize the humiliation to the West if this were to happen. Then again neoconservatives in Washington and in European capitals might win out in the battle with realists and continue pressing the war, though the realists at this stage seem to have the upper hand.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

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6). “Clues Emerge In Bid to Solve Pipeline Attack.”, March 8, 2023, Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman, New York Times.

New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe.

WASHINGTON -- New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.

The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia's year-old war in Ukraine.

Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.

Ukrainian government and military intelligence officials say they had no role in the attack and do not know who carried it out. After this article was published, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Mr. Zelensky, posted on Twitter that Ukraine ''has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap.'' He added that he had no information about pro-Ukrainian ''sabotage groups.''

U.S. officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations. The review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation.

U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services.

Some initial U.S. and European speculation centered on possible Russian culpability, especially given its prowess in undersea operations, though it is unclear what motivation the Kremlin would have in sabotaging the pipelines given that they have been an important source of revenue and a means for Moscow to exert influence over Europe. One estimate put the cost of repairing the pipelines starting at about $500 million. U.S. officials say they have not found any evidence of involvement by the Russian government in the attack.

Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved.

The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explosions in September, in what U.S. officials described at the time as an act of sabotage. European officials have publicly said they believe the operation that targeted Nord Stream was probably state sponsored, possibly because of the sophistication with which the perpetrators planted and detonated the explosives on the floor of the Baltic Sea without being detected. U.S. officials have not stated publicly that they believe the operation was sponsored by a state.

The explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services, U.S. officials who have reviewed the new intelligence said. But it is possible that the perpetrators received specialized government training in the past.

Officials said there were still enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired. But officials said it might constitute the first significant lead to emerge from several closely guarded investigations, the conclusions of which could have profound implications for the coalition supporting Ukraine.

U.S. officials who have been briefed on the intelligence are divided about how much weight to put on the new information. All of them spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.

U.S. officials said the new intelligence reporting has increased their optimism that American spy agencies and their partners in Europe can find more information, which could allow them to reach a firm conclusion about the perpetrators. It is unclear how long that process will take. American officials recently discussed the intelligence with their European counterparts, who have taken the lead in investigating the attack.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. declined to comment. A spokesman for the White House's National Security Council referred questions about the pipelines to the European authorities, who have been conducting their own investigations.

After this report was published, Russia attacked the credibility of the intelligence, complaining that it had been prevented from taking part in the investigations. ''This is obviously a coordinated spread of disinformation in the media,'' Dmitry S. Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told the state-backed Sputnik news agency.

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, as the two pipelines are known, stretch 760 miles from the northwest coast of Russia to Lubmin in northeast Germany. The first cost more than $12 billion to build and was completed in 2011.

Nord Stream 2 cost slightly less than the first pipeline and was completed in 2021, over objections from officials in the United States, Britain, Poland and Ukraine, among others, who warned that it would increase German reliance on Russian gas. During a future diplomatic crisis between the West and Russia, these officials argued, Moscow could blackmail Berlin by threatening to curtail gas supplies, on which the Germans had depended heavily, especially during the winter months. (Germany has weaned itself off reliance on Russian gas over the past year.)

Early last year, President Biden, after meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the White House, said Mr. Putin's decision about whether to attack Ukraine would determine the fate of Nord Stream 2. ''If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,'' Mr. Biden said. ''We will bring an end to it.''

When asked exactly how that would be accomplished, Mr. Biden cryptically said, ''I promise you we'll be able to do it.''

A couple weeks later, Mr. Scholz announced that his government would block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from becoming operational. Two days after that, Russia launched the much-anticipated invasion.

Since the explosions along the pipelines in September, there has been rampant speculation about what transpired on the sea floor near the Danish island of Bornholm.

Poland and Ukraine immediately accused Russia of planting the explosives, but they offered no evidence.

Russia, in turn, accused Britain of carrying out the operation -- also without evidence. Russia and Britain have denied any involvement in the explosions.

Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of Mr. Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president's preinvasion threat to ''bring an end'' to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.

U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement. (Emphasis added, paragraphs 26 & 27)

Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

U.S. officials and intelligence agencies acknowledge that they have limited visibility into Ukrainian decision-making.

Despite Ukraine's deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine's position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war.

The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia's Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border.

But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services.

One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist.

Kyiv denied any involvement but U.S. intelligence agencies eventually came to believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called ''elements'' of the Ukrainian government. In response to the finding, the Biden administration privately rebuked the Ukrainians and warned them against taking similar actions.

The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina's killing. After the Nord Stream operation, there was hushed speculation -- and worry -- in Washington that parts of the Ukrainian government might have been involved in that operation as well.

The new intelligence provided no evidence so far of the Ukrainian government's complicity in the attack on the pipelines, and U.S. officials say the Biden administration's level of trust in Mr. Zelensky and his senior national security team has been steadily increasing.

Days after the explosion, Denmark, Sweden and Germany began their own separate investigations into the Nord Stream operation.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have had difficulty obtaining concrete evidence about what happened on the sea floor in the hours, days and weeks before the explosions.

The pipelines themselves were not closely monitored, by either commercial or government sensors. Moreover, finding the vessel or vessels involved has been complicated by the fact that the explosions took place in a heavily trafficked area.

That said, investigators have many leads to pursue.

According to a European lawmaker briefed late last year by his country's main foreign intelligence service, investigators have been gathering information about an estimated 45 ''ghost ships'' whose location transponders were not on or were not working when they passed through the area, possibly to cloak their movements.

The lawmaker was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of ''military grade'' explosives were used by the perpetrators.

Spokespeople for the Danish government had no immediate comment. Spokespeople for the German government declined to comment.

Mats Ljungqvist, a senior prosecutor leading Sweden's investigation, told The New York Times late last month that his country's hunt for the perpetrators was continuing.

''It's my job to find those who blew up Nord Stream. To help me, I have our country's Security Service,'' Mr. Ljungqvist said. ''Do I think it was Russia that blew up Nord Stream? I never thought so. It's not logical. But as in the case of a murder, you have to be open to all possibilities.''

Reporting was contributed by Rebecca R. Ruiz, Erika Solomon, Melissa Eddy, Michael Schwirtz and Andrew E. Kramer.

(Note: I accessed this New York Times article using a data base that does not include the photos but does include a list of photos and images used in the article, they are listed here with their captions included):

CAPTION(S): PHOTOS: Clockwise from top: Bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching the surface of the Baltic Sea in September, in a photo released by the Danish military; smoke between the Russian mainland and Crimea in October; pipes from Nord Stream 1 last March in Germany (PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANISH DEFENSE MINISTRY, VIA REUTERS; HANNIBAL HANSCHKE/REUTERS; ASSOCIATED PRESS) This article appeared in print on page A1, A11.

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7). “A wide range of pro-Ukrainian groups operate in the shadows of the war”, March 8, 2023, Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, at <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-groups.html>

The new intelligence suggesting the involvement of such a group in explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines last year is extremely vague.

KYIV, Ukraine — New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials has moved a step closer to solving the mystery of who blew up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year. But the intelligence, which suggests that the perpetrators were members of a pro-Ukrainian group, is extremely vague.

The U.S. officials underscored that there was much they did not know about those responsible for the blasts and their affiliations. A number of groups claiming to support Ukraine have sought involvement in the war, although their activities and claims cannot always be independently verified. The intelligence suggests that the saboteurs were opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia but had no known government affiliations, a description that only slightly narrows the range of suspects.

A wide range of pro-Ukrainian groups operate in a murky world with unclear ties to the intelligence or security agencies of Ukraine or other nations. They include groups fighting in southeastern Ukraine or carrying out sabotage operations in Russia and its ally Belarus. Here is a look at the activities of some of them, although there is no evidence that any were involved in the pipeline attack.

Russian Volunteer Corps

A Russian partisan group with ties to the Ukrainian military, this group claimed on March 2 to have conducted a cross-border raid from Ukraine into Russia’s Bryansk region to take control of a small village for several hours, before backtracking into Ukraine. The group’s leader is a Russian nationalist in exile who opposes Mr. Putin’s rule and has said he wants to inspire armed resistance inside Russia. It is unclear whether the group, which does not appear to have any significant support inside Russia, operates with the assent of the Ukrainian authorities.

Bypol

Bypol, an organization of Belarusian activists opposed to the government of the pro-Russian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, claimed in February to have flown a drone rigged with explosives into Belarus, damaging a sophisticated Russian airborne early warning aircraft parked on the runway of an air base. Satellite images of the plane suggested damage to the plane’s radar antenna after the strike. Bypol later released aerial videos that it claimed corroborated its role in the attack. Mr. Lukashenko blames Ukraine’s intelligence services; Kyiv has denied involvement.

Bratstvo

This Ukrainian political party, whose name means Brotherhood, has members fighting in eastern Ukraine, including in special operations. The party has described itself as a “revolutionary Christian community.” The leader, Dmytro Korchynsky, has called the group a “philosophical circle” in addition to a battalion of soldiers. In the war, soldiers in this and other paramilitary groups operate under the command of the Ukrainian military. Four members of Bratstvo were killed during a raid inside Russian territory late last year.

Honor

This group that began as a youth movement is led by Serhii Filimonov, a former member of the Azov organization, a paramilitary group that has fought in the war in eastern Ukraine and was later incorporated into the Ukrainian national guard. Honor has remained apart from the formal military command but, like Bratstvo, has members fighting in the war in southeastern Ukraine.

Tradition and Order

This group and an affiliated organization, Revenge, were best known for violent political actions inside Ukraine before some of its members joined the fight against Russia’s invasion last year. In 2015, members of the group were arrested in connection with arson attacks on stores belonging to the confectionary business of former President Petro O. Poroshenko. Some of its members also stormed Ukraine’s Parliament building after the country’s 2014 revolution and set fire to the office of a now-banned communist party. Members are also now fighting in the war.

(Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. @AndrewKramerNYT)

The Class Struggle

Monday, March 20, 2023

The Battle over Control of the Narrative, About the Destruction of the Nordstream 1 & 2 Pipelines, Marches On

Transcript

“A Pro-Ukrainian Group”

Floating Narratives

Oversight and Authority

Russian Volunteer Corps

Bypol

Bratstvo

Honor

Tradition and Order

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