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October 2, 2022

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Who Is Behind the Sabotage of the Nord Stream Pipelines?

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

This article was written by Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche for the German weekly Neue Solidarität and translated into English for EIR. She is the founder of the international Schiller Institute and the Federal Chair of the BüSo political party in Germany

Oct. 1—The sabotage and possible long-term destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines is an attack on Germany’s existential interests, and means millions of German citizens and many firms will suffer insolvencies and unaffordable heating costs for the coming Winter. It also undermines the demands at recent protest actions in many German cities, of demonstrators who called for an end to the sanctions against Russia and the opening of both pipelines, in order to resolve the two most dramatic threats now confronting Germany: the acute danger of a world war stemming from the confrontation with Russia; and the danger of the total economic collapse, due in large part to the explosion of energy prices. 

If there was ever a situation in which the government needed to fulfill its oath to protect the German people from harm, this act of terrorism requires intransigent clarification and consequences for those responsible. The implication of the answer to the question of who perpetrated it, is enormous, and is likely identical to the question of war and peace.

Beyond all speculation as to who those responsible might be, the issue is comparable to the circumstances surrounding the attack of Sept. 11, 2001. Just as U.S. air space was completely surveilled by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Baltic Sea is among the most tightly monitored zones in the world, and, since the time of the Cold War, has been controlled by NATO, and of course by the neighboring countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany) with a dense network of sonar and underwater microphones to monitor all movement on sea and in the air. 

As in all criminal acts, the questions to be asked are: Who had the means, who had the technical and personnel capabilities to carry out the act, and who was physically present on site in the relevant period of time? The need to fulfill these three criteria limits the list of possible perpetrators to a very short one. And given the tremendous technical requirements for damaging concrete pipelines lying on the sea floor at depths of 70–88 meters, it is generally agreed that such capacities are only at the disposal of countries—and of them, only three: Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Unlikeliness of Russian Responsibility

An extraordinarily useful assessment of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines has been published by Swiss Lt. Col. (ret.) Ralph Bosshard, who took part in the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission in 2014 in Ukraine as senior planning officer, and was later in the OSCE High-Level Planning Group as operations officer. He describes the considerable technical challenges that must be overcome in such a sabotage act, which quite clearly limit the possible culprits to military special forces. And that increases the chances that conclusive information on the attack will come to light.

The robust construction of the pipelines, which are made of special steel and enveloped with concrete, then buried under rubble and covered with other material, requires complex techniques and the use of highly explosive charges at 80 meters under the sea.

Bosshard points out that if the Russian Navy were the perpetrator, it would not have had to take the trouble of destroying the pipelines off the Danish island of Bornholm in the middle of an area closely monitored by NATO, but could have carried it off more easily in the Gulf of Finland. That is, unless the intention was to demonstrate to NATO the superiority of Russian capabilities in seabed warfare, which is an unlikely explanation that Bosshard also references.

So if the Russians can be more or less ruled out as the culprit—after all, they could have simply turned off the tap if Moscow’s aim was to “foment uncertainty” and drive-up gas prices as some media moot—what other options remain?

On the Nachdenkseiten website, Jens Berger notes that the annual NATO maneuver BALTOPS took place in the Baltic Sea in mid-June, with 47 warships under the command of the U.S. 6th Fleet, including the U.S. task force around the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge. Part of this maneuver was an operation by Task Force 68, which was operating off the island of Bornholm with unmanned underwater vehicles that can deactivate mines but, of course, theoretically place them as well.

Strangely enough, this very same task force around the USS Kearsarge was recorded by position signals last week only 10 nautical miles away from Bornholm. This does not yet mean, of course, that these ships were involved, but that they may very well have been.

Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia added further observations on this at a UN Security Council meeting convened at short notice on Friday. He noted that the USS Kearsarge had remained in the vicinity of Bornholm since June; that the ship’s helicopter squad had been patrolling the Bornholm area since early August; and that the flight line of these aircraft surprisingly coincided with the pipeline route. Ambassador Nebenzia stressed, “I emphasize that this is open data on geolocation of sea and air transport, which is collected on the basis of the transponder’s signal. It means that the United States did not conceal its presence in the area and completed its maneuvers in an exhibitory and ostentatious way.”

Is it likely that Russia destroyed the pipelines, in which €20 billion in total had been invested, and from which it could have expected considerable revenue over the long-term? Vladimir Putin had offered as recently as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, two weeks before the sabotage, to open Nord Stream 2, delivering 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, if Germany agreed to lift sanctions against Russia.

‘Thank You, USA’

In the meantime, a video has gone viral on the Internet showing President Biden at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Scholz at the White House on Feb. 7, 2022, where Biden promised that the United States was in a position to put an end to Nord Stream 2, in the event Russia invaded Ukraine. Responding to a reporter who asked how he intended to do it, since Germany was in control of the project, Biden answered: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”

Biden was not the only one to issue such threats: Tucker Carlson showed a video on FOX TV of [Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs] Victoria Nuland announcing the same thing at a State Department press conference back in January, in the event of a Russian invasion: “One way or another, Nord Stream 2 won’t move forward.” After the attack on the pipelines, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski—husband of the bellicose Atlanticist Anne Applebaum—rejoiced, referring in a tweet to Biden’s Feb. 7 promise. “A small thing, but so much joy,” Sikorski wrote. And in another tweet: “Thank you USA.” That tweet has since been deleted.

Obviously, the facts given here are only leads, and not yet proof of the perpetrators’ identities. But the implications of the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines are enormous. They massively increase the immediate prospect of Europe’s deindustrialization, and its dependence on U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG). The skyrocketing costs are already causing a massive exodus of companies from Europe, and especially from Germany to the United States. All this means an assault on the living standards of the population.

The fact that the pipelines have suffered considerable damage, and that repairs, according to the operators, would not be impossible but would take a very long time, has for now taken the wind out of the sails of the German protesters who were demanding the opening of the pipelines and the end of the sanctions against Russia. The pipelines will be inoperable this Winter and beyond, and a possible path to a diplomatic solution with Russia, given the growing threat of war, has been buried.

‘Cold-Blooded Economic Warfare’

However, if it is established that the attack was actually the execution of what Biden had announced Feb. 7 in the presence of Scholz, then Europe will have to immediately free itself from subjugation to the United States and the U.K. and mobilize all its efforts to overcoming the conflict with Russia, and increasingly with China, by diplomatic means.

In any event, U.S. responsibility would not be entirely new. On Feb. 27, 2004, the Washington Post reported that Ronald Reagan had agreed to a CIA plan [in January 1982] to sabotage the Soviet economy by covertly feeding it, among other things, contaminated software that later caused a gigantic explosion of the Siberian gas pipeline in January 2004. This revelation was taken from the memoirs of former Air Force Secretary Thomas C. Reed, who reported that this explosion was just one example of the “cold-blooded economic warfare” that the CIA waged against the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War. It was economic bankruptcy that led to the end of the Cold War, not battles or an exchange of nuclear strikes, Reed said.

We will have to make sure that the German politicians who want to “ruin Russia” do not willingly put themselves at the service of the perpetrators in covering up the crime. For that, the “harshest consequences” announced by Ursula von der Leyen [President of the European Commission], will have to be implemented, if the Germans do not want to give up altogether. It must be ensured in any case that Russia is included in the investigations. The fact that Scholz has promised support to Denmark and Sweden is definitely too little. Likewise, that Germany intends to strengthen precautions and protection against sabotage for critical infrastructure together with its partners and allies, as government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said, sounds more like a declaration of surrender than an announcement of the government’s intention to stand up for the existential interests of the German people, as it swore to do in its oath of office.

It is high time to remind them of that commitment.

—zepp-larouche@eir.de


Natalia Vitrenko: ‘History Acquits Us and Will Be Proud of Us. The Banning Of Our Party Is Unjust And Unlawful.’

Oct. 1, 2022 (EIRNS)– The following statement was released on Sept. 30 by Natalia Vitrenko, and was received by the Schiller Institute. We hope to have more details soon on the outrageous violations of due process and “democratic” norms by the Ukrainian Presidency, Ministry of Justice, SBU and Supreme Court in this case.

Message to members of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU), members of the Central Committee of the PSPU, and friends all over the world:

On 27 September 2022 in Kyiv, the Administrative Appeals Court of the Supreme Court of Ukraine partially satisfied the PSPU’s Appellate Complaint, by deleting from the ruling of the 8th Administrative Appeals Court in Lviv, dated 23 June 2022, a part of the abhorrent charges, while allowing the decision on banning our party to stand.

I believe that this not only is a politically motivated punishment of our party, but it tramples on all the foundations of European democracy. The principle of the supremacy of law, enshrined in the Constitution and in conventions, has been trampled—a principle that consists of lawfulness; legal certainty; the prohibition of arbitrary actions; guaranteed access to due process, provided by independent and fair courts; respect for human rights; the prohibition of discrimination; and guaranteed equality before the law.

The PSPU’s Appellate Complaint smashed to pieces the ruling by the court of the first instance, showing that it was unlawful and baseless. Our opponents, represented by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine (MinJust) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) failed in its suit, its written answers to the PSPU’s Appellate Complaint, and its oral arguments before the Supreme Court, to refute a single legal substantiation of the invalidity of their accusations against our party.

The Supreme Court’s 27 September decision was handed down by a panel of judges chaired by S. Ukhanenko, in whom the PSPU, during the court session, officially presented grounds for no-confidence and for a transfer of the case to the full Court.

The decision to ban the PSPU was political and discriminatory in nature, rather than juridical, because the motive for banning the Party was based on political accusations, not on any legal substantiation of violations of the Constitution of Ukraine or the European Convention on Human Rights by the PSPU.

I cite here one of the accusations by the MinJust, supported by the SBU, in their Statement of Claim: “The Party protests against Ukraine’s joining NATO and the EU, against the rehabilitation of OUN-UPA [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army] fighters, declares fidelity to Eastern Slavic culture and canonical Orthodoxy, and envisions Ukraine in an inter-state union with Russia and Belarus.”

It is absolutely obvious to any honest human rights organization or any European jurist, that such politically motivated accusations as those, made by the Ukrainian government, are inadmissible as the basis for banning parties, under the Constitution of Ukraine (Art. 37), the European Convention on Human Rights (Art. 11, p. 2), European Court precedents, or the Venice Commission of the OSCE.

From the very beginning, when their party was founded in 1996, the Progressive Socialists offered Ukraine a strategy for domestic and foreign policy, based on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine (1990) and the Declaration of the Rights of the Nationalities of Ukraine (1991), which were passed by the Ukrainian Parliament, and which defined the essential nature of national sovereignty after the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine had been supported in the All-Ukraine Referenda of 17 March 1991 and 1 December 1991.

In the setting of the tragedy of the disintegration of the USSR, only the principles declared by the people of Ukraine—namely, a neutral, non-bloc status for the country; the impermissibility of the sale of land and the looting (in the form of privatization) of economic capacities belonging to the entire nation; equal rights for the citizens of Ukraine regardless of ethnicity, faith, language preference or cultural tradition; and Ukraine’s entry, on an equal footing, into a new inter-state union with the republics of the former USSR—offered a guarantee of peaceful coexistence with the former Soviet republics and the successful development of Ukraine as an independent, sovereign state. They provided Ukraine with territorial integrity within its 1991 borders and a guarantee of security from all leading countries in the world.

This explains the hatred of our party on the part of world imperialism and Ukrainian nationalism (fascism). They always fought against us, because we openly opposed the model of peripheral, colonial capitalism, imposed upon Ukraine by the IMF [International Monetary Fund], and we opposed privatization, the creation of an oligarchy, financial speculation, the cheap-labor model, capital flight, labor flight, the sale of land, the extermination of the Russian language and languages of ethnic minorities, the rewriting of history, debasement of the Soviet people’s victory in the Great Patriotic War, and making heroes of collaborationists from the OUN-UPA, and were against government agencies’ unleashing of terrorism against the canonical Orthodox Church.

I am proud of our Party and of every rank-and-file member, because we have been the only party in Ukraine to propose a scientifically based, comprehensive program of reforms for the country. I am certain that the implementation of our program would have prevented the current tragedy of the war, destruction of the economy, dying out of the population, and territorial losses.

Neither I, the leaders of our party organizations, nor the members of the PSPU ever called for a violent overthrow of the constitutional order or for violence of any sort. The goals and activity of our Party abided by all the norms and principles of democracy. Neither the MinJust nor the SBU offered a single piece of evidence to the contrary in court. We were prepared to achieve our goals through competition in elections. In the fight against us, however, terrorism, fakery, raider takeovers, slanders, and threats were employed.

The Party nominated me as a candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine four times—in 1999, 2004, 2009, and 2019. Those in power allowed me to take part in the elections only in 1999 and 2004. In 1999, when some of the attributes of democracy still remained in Ukraine, the power of our ideas and the population’s support of them were so great, that sociological polls forecast that I would defeat the incumbent President L. Kuchma in the second round.

But the terrorist attack on me, 2 October 1999 in Krivoy Rog, when two RGD-5 grenades were thrown at me and my entourage, was used by my opponents to frighten the voters, and I was deprived of victory. Victory was stolen from our Party through vote fraud in the parliamentary elections of 2002 and 2006. But popular support for the ideas and actions of the PSPU were very high at that time, because when we entered the Supreme Rada of Ukraine as a caucus in 1998, we had showed our fighting qualities, task-orientation, and commitment to principle. The members of our Party who were elected to local self-government bodies carried on the same kind of self-sacrificing fight.

I am grateful to every member of the PSPU, who fought in our ranks selflessly and with all their heart to save Ukraine and transform the world. I am also grateful to the millions of people who supported our sacred struggle by voting for us. A deep bow to you all!

The position of our Party was always an impediment to the ruling governments’ ability to loot the country, mercilessly exploit the population of Ukraine, and conduct domestic and foreign policies in the interests not of their own people, but of the West’s imperialists.

Under the Constitution of Ukraine, responsibility for peace and for the lives, dignity, and health of the citizens lies with the institutions of state power, headed by the President.

Failing to meet its responsibilities and engaging in detestable mind control, the government of Ukraine issued a piece of fakery in the form of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine dated 18 March 2022, implemented by the President of Ukraine with his Decree dated 19 March 2022, to suspend the activity of several parties in Ukraine, including ours. And in order to prevent us from defending our rights, freedoms, and legal interests in civil and administrative courts, the 8th Administrative Appeals Court of Lviv ruled on 20 May 2022 to freeze the PSPU’s bank account. This deprived us of the possibility of contesting in court, as untruthful, the NSDC’s decision, the Decree of the President of Ukraine, and the entire “evidence” base submitted to the court by the MinJust and the SBU.

In violation of Article 55 of the Constitution of Ukraine and Article 6 of the European Convention, we were deprived of access to the court, because of the impossibility for the PSPU to pay the court fee from its bank account. Our purpose would have been to refute, on the basis of our own lawsuits, the false information submitted by the MinJust and the SBU as the basis for banning the PSPU.

The blocking of our bank account also deprived the PSPU of the right to hire the services of a lawyer. Vladimir Marchenko and I were forced to conduct the entire, exhausting legal battle ourselves. He represented the interests of the PSPU before the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court refused to accept as evidence the Statement of the CC PSPU “Ukrainian Democracy Needs to Be Defended by the Supreme Court against the Government’s Dictatorship,” or the statements of Chairman of the PSPU, People’s Deputy of Ukraine [Member of Parliament] in 1995-2002 N. Vitrenko “I Defend Peace, Socialism, and Democracy, Not War, Nazism and Capitalism,” of First Deputy Chairman of the PSPU, People’s Deputy of Ukraine in 1990-2002 V. Marchenko “The Supreme Court Is the Last Hope for Defending Democracy against the Arbitrary Actions of the MinJust and the SBU, and against the Establishment of a Dictatorship,” of Member of the CC PSPU, Deputy of the Mykolaiv Regional Council in 2006-2010 Larisa Shesler “Relations between Ukraine and Russia. I Have a Right to My Opinion,” and of Member of the CC PSPU, Deputy of the Romny Municipal Council in 2002-2010 and outstanding athlete of our time Sergei Gavras “I Bear Witness before God, the Court, and History. Testimony of a Champion.” The Court was in a panic over the inability of the MinJust and the SBU to refute the evidence presented in these declarations, regarding the true goals and activity of the PSPU.

In contrast, the Court deemed worthy as evidence fabrications from the Internet, submitted by the SBU, without any investigation of the primary sources or confirmation of their truthfulness. The Court also accepted, without evidence, some distorted fragments of interviews of N. Vitrenko and L. Shesler and the attribution to the PCPU of financing terrorists, propagandizing in favor of war, and justifying the actions of the Russian Federation.

The Supreme Court, in politically motivated discrimination against the PSPU, denied all 19 of the motions made by our Party, including the ones on access to evidence of the activity of the OUN-UPA; on confirmation of any violations of law on the part of the PSPU, established by the judges; on the illegality of the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated 19 March 2022; on asking the Constitutional Court for a determination of the constitutionality of that Decree; and others. Brought to light in court was the monstrous position of the MinJust and SBU, that Ukraine refuses to fulfill its obligations under the UN Charter (Article 25), and therefore to obey the UN Security Council resolution on the Minsk Accords. In addition, the refusal to adhere to the Charter and Judgment of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

The Supreme Court undertook no investigation at all of whether the norms of law were legally applied by the Lviv court in banning the Party. The Court allowed Vladimir Marchenko only 20 minutes to present our case. It did not allow argument, citing the fact that the Court was considering the banning of the Party using a simplified procedure. Think about that: banning a party, with the institution of the party being a foundation of democracy in general and European democracy in particular, using a simplified procedure! Without proper investigation of the evidence or application of the norms of law!

It will be interesting to see what conclusion the Venice Commission draws regarding democracy in Ukraine, based on the example of the banning of the PSPU.

I am convinced that neither those in power in Ukraine, nor the Supreme Court, have succeeded in defeating our ideas or proving the illegality of our activity. Their ban on the Party is not the period at the end of a sentence, but a comma. History acquits us. The true guilty parties in the tragedy of the war will be named. Truth and justice will prevail.

Toward victory, always!

Natalia Vitrenko,

People’s Deputy of Ukraine, 1995-2002,

Doctor of Economics, Academician

30 September 2022