BERLIN, September 15. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged to carry out an unbiased investigation into the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 sabotage and to bring those responsible to justice in Germany, the DPA news agency reported.

"It was a terrorist attack," Scholz told the public in the northeast German town of Prenzlau. "We call upon all security agencies and the attorney general to carry out an unbiased investigation."

"We want to bring to justice those responsible, and, if we manage to catch them, we want to try them in Germany. Trust me, we will not spare them," Scholz added.

The head of the German government said his country had to spend "more than 100 billion euro" to replace Russian natural gas delivered via the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines with fuel from other sources, including LNG, as well as to support its citizens and businesses.

In his words, gas prices had to be brought down to keep businesses afloat and to make sure that individuals can afford gas in their households.

On September 26, 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 in the Baltic Sea near the Danish island of Bornholm. On September 26, 2022, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office launched a criminal case in connection with the incident based on charges of international terrorism.

 

Investigation into Nord Stream sabotage

August Hanning, who served as director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service from 1998-2005, told the Die Welt newspaper on August 15 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 Stream sabotage.

Besides, the German media reported Poland was reluctant to provide any assistance to the ongoing investigation. According to German investigators, Warsaw "was not ready for cooperation from the very start."

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.