PARIS, February 12. /TASS/. The sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in September 2022 was aimed at completely disrupting the ties between Russia and Germany, a French military expert has told Sud Radio.
"Provocations of this kind and the use of terrorist methods - because, formally, exploding a pipeline is an act of terrorism - is in their [US] tradition," said French military historian Laurent Henninger, commenting on recent findings by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
On February 8, Hersh published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives were planted under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines by US Navy divers under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation.
"Many think they [US] benefitted from it, because Europe lost Russian gas and had to buy US shale gas," said Henninger, who is also an author for the Defence Nationale magazine. "But I see one more important reason: they wanted to burn all bridges that link certain circles within Germany’s ruling class with Russia, to burn them both practically and symbolically."
Commenting on mainstream Western media reports, accusing Russia of blowing up the pipelines, Henninger said "this is what the press was instructed to do."
"But at this point, there is no need for such instructions, as the press has already been programmed to come up with an automatic response to such things. They always blame Russia, Russia is always evil," he said.
US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said earlier that the US denies they were involved in the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and believes its explanations on the matter are credible. He called the theory laid out by Hersh complete and utter nonsense.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines. On September 26, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office launched a criminal case based on charges of international terrorism.