Nothing can be said with absolute certainty, writes journalist Christian Ortner in the Wiener Zeitung: “Who blew up the gas pipeline remains anyone’s guess. The only thing that is fairly clear is that it was probably someone acting in the name of a state. Beyond that, the setting is strikingly similar to that on board the Orient Express in 1934. All those who could be a suspect also have a motive. … There’s the US, as Hersh suggests. … But the Kremlin also has motives. … As do Poland and Ukraine. … In the novel, Hercule Poirot only announces the surprising result once he’s absolutely certain about the murderer’s identity. We haven’t got that far yet in the Nord Stream 2 case.”
Le Temps doubts that the US is entirely innocent: “It is suspected that the US used the pretext of war to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines once and for all, so as to replace Russian gas with American gas and make Europe permanently dependent on its energy. … Joe Biden publicly stated in February 2022: ’If Russia invades Ukraine, there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.’ … Seven months later the time had come! The evidence is only circumstantial and there is no proof, but there is still room for doubt.” […]
Hersh’s Nord Stream blog post does not merit all this fuss, Handelsblatt finds:“Hersh constructs a conspiracy without asking the right questions. The most important one is: why? The German-Russian natural gas partnership was history when the pipes burst at the bottom of the sea. The German government had stopped the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 after Russia’s attack on Ukraine and announced that it would no longer import Russian gas. This meant that Nord Stream 1 no longer had a future either. Why should the Americans blow up an investment ruin – and risk a rift with Germany for the sake of a failed energy project? To sell liquefied gas to the EU? The corresponding contracts had been concluded long before September 2022.” Läs artikel