BERLIN, February 6. /TASS/. The German authorities are unlikely to be interested in finding those responsible for undermining the Nord Streams pipelines, Steffen Kotre, member of the Bundestag from the Alternative for Germany faction, told TASS.
"We have seen hints of such a development of events before, when the Swedish and Danish intelligence services stated that they were not going to share information with Germany," he said. The politician suggested that the German authorities "are not interested in the investigation."
Earlier, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported citing sources that Sweden, most likely, could not identify the suspects in the explosions and plans to close the case. Official information on this matter is that the prosecutor's office of the Scandinavian country will announce a decision on Wednesday, but what it will be is still unknown.
According to Kotre, such a situation has occurred because "the federal government wants to provide energy supply out of nothing and has abandoned Russian gas." He expressed the view that the Nord Stream explosions "came in handy, first of all, for the Green party."
The Suddeutsche Zeitung also stated that the termination of the case in Sweden could play into the hands of the German side: Stockholm, in theory, would be able to transfer the collected evidence to Berlin. The German side is especially interested in parts of pipes that the Swedish military recovered from the bottom of the Baltic Sea shortly after the explosions. Kotre expressed doubt that Swedish investigators could now hand over possible evidence to German investigators. "If they had irrefutable evidence, then they would have to bring charges," the deputy noted.
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.
On February 8, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article, which said, citing sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022, and Norwegians activated the bombs three months later. The New York Times reported citing American officials that sabotage on gas pipelines could have been carried out by a certain "pro-Ukrainian group" that acted without the knowledge of the US authorities.