NEW YORK, March 8. /TASS/. The New York Times' article about a pro-Ukrainian group that was allegedly behind the Nord Stream bombing is a clumsy attempt to absolve Western leaders of responsibility, representative of the Schiller Institute at the United Nations in New York Richard Black told TASS.
"The New York Times' article reveals that the US intelligence agencies that direct to the article have hysterical reaction to the wide circulation of the article by Seymour Hersh. It has been backed up by many independent military experts around the globe. The wide circulation of Hersh`s article is echoing within the context of a rejection by the population, in Europe for instance, of the credibility of the governments," he said.
The expert claims that the newspaper article contains no news or evidence. "The content of the New York Times' article is not there. There is no news, no evidence. All they talked about is officials who they don’t name. What was the investigation? Where is the evidence, what did they find? It’s nothing," he added.
According to Black, "Hersh proceeded in his article the way that any experienced prosecutor would do. Who has the motive to carry this out, who has a capability to carry it out and then the opportunity to carry out the crime? The overall message of the New York Times article is 'don’t worry, don’t think about it'. By the way, they said in the article - no American and no British operators were involved. So, this is a less than a covered up, it’s quite hysterical reaction."
"It’s an international scandal that president Joe Biden said the intention to destroy of the pipeline at the beginning of the 2022. Chancellor Scholtz was at his side when it was done. This article is a very flimsy cover up of the fact of global leaders’ responsibility for this act of gross terrorism, which is throwing the population of western Europe into tremendous misery and impoverishment," he added.
The New York Times reported earlier, citing anonymous sources, that US intelligence has so far been unable to identify the mastermind of last September's sabotage attacks that targeted the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which transported natural gas from Russia to Europe. The anonymous officials interviewed by the newspaper said there had been no firm conclusions about those responsible, thus 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."
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on February 8 published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were planted by US Navy divers, helped by Norwegian specialists, under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that the CIA and Burns took part in the preparation of the operation, and US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation after nine months of deliberations with the administration’s national security staff.
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, 2022, 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.