Image Credit: MIKHAIL METZEL via Getty Images 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has branded claims that the Nord Stream pipeline attack was the work of pro-Ukrainian activists “nonsense,” arguing the blasts must have been carried out by a state.
Last week, The New York Times reported that a “pro-Ukrainian group” had sabotaged the pipelines, using a team with as few as six people involved in the mission, contradicting previous assumptions that only a state would have had the resources to carry out the operation.
The report was very careful to explicitly state that no Americans or Brits were involved in the attack.
The article emerged weeks after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.
According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.
One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”
With Russia having previously branded the NYT report a work of “disinformation,” Putin went further during comments he made to reporters.
“I’m sure this is complete nonsense. An explosion of this kind – of such power, at such depth, can only be carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state, possessing certain technologies,” he said.
As we highlighted yesterday, Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly admitted that the long term goal of western involvement in Ukraine is not merely to see Moscow defeated, but to enact “regime change,” in another dangerous escalation of rhetoric.
The US and Russia are currently involved in another stand off after a Russian fighter collided with a US Reaper drone, forcing it to crash into the Black Sea.
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