News reports emerging from Germany and the United States claim that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

By Roger McKenzie

German daily newspaper Die Zeit, public broadcasters ARD and SWR, and the ARD political magazine Kontraste reported in March 2023 that investigators were able to reconstruct how the pipelines from Russia to Germany were sabotaged on September 26, 2022.

Citing several unnamed officials, the investigation by the news outlets revealed that five men and a woman used a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland to carry out the attack.

The New York Times also reported that U.S. intelligence is suggesting a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the blasts.

The Times said that U.S. President Joe Biden and his top aides “did not authorize” the attack.

The New York Times typically behaves like a mouthpiece for the State Department. The Times was forced to issue an apology in 2004 over its misleading coverage about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was essentially used by the State Department to parrot the lines that justified the illegal war carried out by the U.S. and its allies.

But here we are again—this time after a report by award-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, which accused the U.S. of ordering the bombing of Nord Stream pipelines under cover of a NATO exercise.

Hersh explained how the Norwegians helped U.S. divers set the remotely triggered explosives under the pipelines in June 2022.

Washington and its allies have denied the accusation made by Hersh. The New York Times, true to form, has chosen to parrot the lines given to it and hand-picked German outlets.

Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that he had read the news reports “with great interest” but warned against drawing quick conclusions on the issue.

“We need to clearly differentiate whether it was a Ukrainian group that acted on the orders of Ukraine or… without the government’s knowledge,” he told reporters.

This is so different from the insistence by the U.S. and its allies that Russia was responsible for blowing up the pipelines it earned money from by supplying vast quantities of energy to Europe.

The Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov rejected suggestions that the attack might have been ordered by Kyiv.

He told reporters: “It’s like a compliment for our special forces, but this is not our activity.”

Of course he denies it. He will already be aware that the U.S. was responsible for the explosion.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the New York Times report, noting that investigations by Denmark, Germany, and Sweden are still ongoing.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the latest media reports as a coordinated manipulation intended to conceal the origins of the attack.

He said: “The masterminds of the terror attack clearly want to distract attention.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his officials have accused the U.S. of staging the blowing up of the pipelines, which they described as a “terror attack.”

Jan Oberg, the director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research said that once the reporting by Hersh is vindicated and the role of U.S. Navy forces proven, “Europeans will wake up and finally understand that they no longer share interests with the U.S.”

The Women-led peace organization CODEPINK issued a statement that “We need a real, public investigation into this crime against the environment!”

Not for the first time, national organizer for Black Alliance for Peace, Ajamu Baraka, got it right when he tweeted: “The arrogance of the white supremacist mind makes it impossible for it to understand how latest propaganda ploy with the misinformation campaign on the U.S. attack on Nord Stream pipelines is making the U.S. press a laughing stock around the world.”

“Since the U.S. claims it wants to crack down on misinformation campaigns, perhaps it should investigate the [Times’] misinformation campaign on the Nord Stream attack?”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Roger McKenzie is the international editor of the Morning Star newspaper. Follow Roger on Twitter on @RogerAMck.