The rapprochement between Washington and Moscow is not only unsettling for the transatlantic community in Europe, but it could also have extremely unpleasant consequences for former Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The issue at hand is the destruction of the two Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. According to sources close to the negotiating parties, Moscow is still demanding an investigation into the crime and, if necessary, the punishment of the perpetrators.
Efforts by Russia to be informed by the German government and the General Prosecutor’s Office about the progress of the investigation have been unsuccessful. Berlin has remained tight-lipped and has not accepted Russian offers to participate in an international investigation commission.
“‘While Olaf Scholz has so far tried to let the events surrounding Nord Stream 2 fade into the background, the Russians do not intend to let the attack pass unnoticed” the Berliner Zeitung reports. After all, it is about the billions of investments that Russia and other countries have made.”
However, the end of the ice age in the relationships between the US and Russia could make Scholz’s case go cold. “It is essential to clarify the Nord Stream case – to deter imitators” said a person familiar with the matter to the Berliner Zeitung.
The Russians are alarmed because attacks on pipelines “appear to be the new trend” the newspaper notes, citing recent examples of Ukrainian attacks on pipelines. For instance, Kiev recently admitted to a drone attack on a pumping station in the Krasnodar region, which transports gas to Kazakhstan. The result: Kazakhstan is likely to reduce its oil exports to the West by a third over the next six to eight weeks, according to the pipeline operator’s statements.
In January, Ukraine had also launched a drone attack on the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas through Turkey to Europe. In this case, the attack was successfully repelled without significant damage to the pipeline, but the political fallout was significant: Hungary and Slovakia strongly condemned Kiev’s attacks on European energy security, while Berlin remained silent.
While the perpetrators of these two attacks are clearly identified, the question of guilt remains open in the case of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made it clear that Moscow demands an investigation.
“Germany must answer all questions about the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Berlin must stop refusing to provide facts that it cannot ignore. If the information we request is not provided through official channels but appears in newspaper articles, the suspicion arises that the whole thing is staged” Lavrov said in an interview with Isvestia in August 2024.
The General Prosecutor’s Office believes that “some Ukrainian individuals who had gone off the deep end on a sailing yacht were the perpetrators” as the Berliner Zeitung aptly put it. An arrest warrant has been issued for a suspected perpetrator, “although no one knows if the man even exists – he has disappeared.”
Moscow considers the version presented by Berlin to be unbelievable, with a media conglomerate fabricating fantastical stories. “Even if some of the individuals mentioned in the German press – it was about Ukrainians – were somehow involved, it is clear that they could not have done it alone” the Russian Foreign Minister said. According to Lavrov, a command “from the very top” would have been required for an attack of this magnitude.
Russian diplomats have described it as “embarrassing” that Germany is silently accepting the loss of a long-term basis for its economic well-being and energy security.
It is also embarrassing that the Chancellor has remained silent as US President Joe Biden announced, during a meeting with Scholz, that Nord Stream 2 would not come into operation. The Biden administration is not only a prime suspect in the Nord Stream case, but also a key player in the investigation, given its reported involvement in the pipeline’s destruction.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a detailed investigation in February 2023, in which he held the Biden administration responsible for the pipeline’s destruction, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the operation’s planning.
“If the Russians and Americans were to jointly conduct a thorough investigation, it would likely become clear what and how much Chancellor Scholz and his colleagues knew” the Berliner Zeitung notes. And according to Seymour Hersh, Scholz knows a lot – and is helping the Americans cover up the terrorist attack.
In October, during his farewell visit to Berlin, the suspected mastermind Joe Biden was awarded the highest order of the Federal Republic of Germany by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for his “outstanding services to German-American friendship and the transatlantic alliance.”
The award was only fitting. After all, Scholz had emphasized during his visit to the US in February 2022, after Biden’s announcement, that “there will be no measures that would make us act differently.” “We are acting together” Scholz added in English – a sentence that could yet prove to be his undoing.