Swedish Prosecutor believes state actor behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts

Swedish Prosecutor believes state actor behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts

By admin  On April 11, 2023 In Insurance Marine News, Keep, Offshore Energy, Political Risk, Credit & Finance 

Marine Insurance News 18 April 2023

The Swedish Prosecutor has said that the “main scenario” for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year was that a state actor was “involved”.

Several underwater explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and newly-built Nord Stream 2 pipelines in September 2022, effectively severing the pipeline link from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.

The blasts occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. Bot countries have said that the explosions were deliberate, but neither is willing to say who they think was responsible.

Russia, Ukraine and the USA have denied any responsibility, while in recent weeks attention has turned to the activities of private vessels in the region.

The blast in the Swedish zone occurred at a depth of 80 metres, which the Swedish prosecutor said made it complicated to investigate. “We believe it will be rather difficult to determine who did this,” prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters in a phone interview, noting that “the people who did this have probably been aware that they would leave clues behind and probably took care so that the evidence would not point in one direction, but in several directions”.

“That makes it difficult to clearly point to one actor.”

Ljungqvist said investigators had been able to determine what type of explosive had been used and that this ruled out “a very large number of actors”, but he declined to name the explosive, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

Germany has confirmed its investigators raided a ship in January that might have been used to transport the explosives used to blow up the pipelines. German media reported the boat could have been used by a small Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian group.

Ljungqvist said it could not be completely ruled out that an independent group, as opposed to a state actor, was behind the attack, but he thought that it was unlikely. “There are certain companies that have certain special missions that mean they could, in theory, carry this out,” he said.  “We don’t rule out anything, but that it is a state actor who is directly or at least indirectly behind this is of course our absolute main scenario, given all the circumstances.”