BERLIN, August 26. /TASS/. The German government does not share the Polish and Czech authorities’ position that the Nord Stream pipelines could be a "legitimate target" for Kiev and believes that their blowing up was a crime, German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said.
"No," he told reporters when asked whether the German government shares Poland and the Czech Republic’s position that if Ukraine was behind the act of sabotage at these gas pipelines, they were a legitimate target for it.
"The chancellor stated this explicitly during his talks with the Polish and Czech sides, as well as with many other international partners. He has said that he thinks it was a crime and that this crime is to be investigated," he said, adding that the German general prosecutor’s office continues the probe.
Czech President Petr Pavel said in an interview with Novinky earlier that the Nord Streams were a legitimate target for Ukraine. He noted that the armed conflict is conducted "not only against military targets, but also against strategic targets," and the gas pipelines could be seen as such. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova compared such pronouncements to terrorist rhetoric.
August Hanning, who served as director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service from 1998-2005, told the Die Welt newspaper on August 16 that the Polish and Ukrainian presidents, Andrzej Duda and Vladimir Zelensky, had apparently agreed to collaborate in sabotaging the underwater pipelines as this "terrorist act" could not have been just a private endeavor. He called on German leaders to demand that Kiev and Warsaw make up for the losses following the blasts at the pipelines if their involvement in the acts of sabotage is proved.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported on August 14, citing a joint probe with ARD television and the weekly Die Zeit, that German federal prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor suspected of having played a role in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines. While the suspect’s last known whereabouts were in Poland, he has reportedly disappeared. The German prosecutor’s office, the newspaper said, suspects two other Ukrainian diving instructors of involvement in the Nord Streams sabotage. In addition, the German media accused Poland of lack of assistance in the investigation into the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. According to German investigators, the Polish authorities "were not ready to cooperate from the very beginning.".