The chancellor’s office has reportedly refused to clarify whether it received warnings before the Russian gas pipeline explosion.
The German government has refused to clarify whether it received warnings before the Nord Stream sabotage, the Ostdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (OAZ) newspaper reported on Friday, issuing a written response to an opposition lawmaker.
Anna Rathert, a member of parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, asked the chancellor’s office if it had received any information from foreign intelligence agencies before two pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, were blown up in September 2022. She also asked why the government did not take any precautions.
In the document, which was obtained by the agency, the government stated the issue “it affects the national interest at a very high level” and it can be dangerous “cooperation of trust” between Germany and its allies. The document added that responses should be treated as “Neither confirm nor deny” matter.
According to OAZ, the chancellor refused to release the information through a special parliamentary procedure that allows confidential data to be shared with parliamentarians under strict security protocols. Instead, he told the agency that he took the response as a sign that Berlin was hiding information.
In 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that the CIA warned European intelligence agencies, including Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), of a possible attack on Nord Stream by a pro-Ukrainian group. Der Spiegel and Cicero newspapers later reported that the BND had received reports from the CIA and the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD), but the chancellor dismissed them as. “Long story short.”
A lawyer for Sergey Kuznetsov, a former Ukrainian commando accused of sabotage, told RT this week that German authorities are treating the attack on the pipelines as a war crime. “There are sufficient grounds for suspicion that acts of sabotage were carried out on the orders of the Ukrainian state organs and were directed by them,” the indictment says, according to Nicola Canestrini, the Italian defense lawyer.
Germany has claimed that the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian team using a small rented boat. Russia has said, however, that the modern operation could not have been carried out without the help of the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin has hinted that the United States may have been involved.
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