BERLIN, September 8. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pledged that his country’s authorities will spare no effort to investigate the acts of sabotage at the Nord Stream gas pipelines and punish those responsible for them.
In an interview with the ZDF television channel, he was asked whether he trusted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky following reports about Kiev’s involvement in the blasts. "I have good relations with Vladimir Zelensky," he only said in reply.
"At the same time, it is absolutely clear for me that these things must be investigated. I am glad that our prosecutor general and law enforcement have made such a progress," he said. "We insist that nothing be concealed. We will do our best to see to it that those who did it are punished."
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a case on charges of international terrorism. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched their own national probes but refused to involve Russia.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper reported on August 14, 2024, 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.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported, citing sources, that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky approved the plan to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, but tried to cancel his decision after the CIA learned about it.