Front Burner - Who attacked the Nord Stream pipelines?

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

In late September of 2022, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines — which supply Russian natural gas to Germany and the rest of Europe via the Baltic Sea — were hit by a series of underwater explosions. Against the backdrop of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing tensions that have resulted, officials soon concluded that it was an act of intentional sabotage. But by whom? More than half a year later, there's still no clear answer. Today, Washington Post reporter Shane Harris takes us inside this high-stakes whodunnit, explaining the various theories, and the evidence supporting or undercutting them — and how it all hinges on an unassuming 50-foot sailing yacht known as the Andromeda. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Back in late September, an act of sabotage put three of Russia's four natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea out of commission. Sabotage at sea, that's what President Biden is calling the leaks and explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines. The busy Baltic Sea bursting with gas from rupt known as Nord Stream 1 and 2. The pipelines were meant to deliver gas to Germany and Western Europe.

What followed the explosions is a geopolitical whodunit. Officials and intelligence sources in several countries pointing the finger at each other. Investigations are now underway in Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. And six months later, it's still not clear who bombed the Nord Stream pipelines, but conflicting theories have emerged. Was it a group with links to Ukraine? That's a theory floated by reporting from the New York Times and German newspaper Die Zeit. Was it the United States? That's a reporting by Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hershages. Or maybe there are holes in both those theories, because that's what my guest today has been reporting on as he tries

to get to the bottom of who actually blew up Nord Stream. Shane Harris is an intelligence and national security reporter with The Washington Post. Hi, Shane. Welcome back to FrontBurner. It's always so great to have you. Hi. Thanks for having me back. So before we get into this whodunit, why was Nord Stream so important to Russia? Well, it was important to Russia because it was a major conduit through which they could sell natural gas into Europe. So when this project got off the ground, or was beginning, I should say, in the late 90s, the idea here was that this was going to open up a whole market in Europe for Russian energy.

And obviously there are there's a huge customer base in Europe for that. With this project we show, also in the presence of so many representatives from European countries, that we feel sure of a secure and resilient partnership with Russia in the presence of so many representatives from European countries, that we feel sure of a secure and resilient partnership with Russia in the future.

And this was at a time when, of course, the Soviet Union had fallen some years earlier. Russia is kind of turning into more of a market economy and wants a place to sell its natural resources, of which it has abundant sources. And Nord Stream kind of became one of the key pipelines literally to do that. The pipeline will be able to transport an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas and provide the European Union with gas from Russia for over 50 years. So obviously the destruction of the pipeline is harmful to Russia. Who else does it harm? Well, it also arguably harms customers of

Russian natural gas. There's a lot of those in Germany where the pipes land, essentially, and where the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was designed to bring gas as well. And, you know, companies that sell gas through the pipelines now don't have a conduit there. The Russian companies, as you mentioned, can be harmed by that. And also, this was a big project for the people who were behind this, who kind of saw this as opening up, particularly with Nord Stream 2, even more access to the Russian market. And now those dreams are at least temporarily dashed. It's important to say there are other ways of getting energy, of course, into Europe. But this was a big one that the advocates for Nord Stream, particularly Russia and Germany, had quite a bit riding.

Okay. And then do the other side for me. Who are the big players who stand to gain from the destruction of the pipeline or are maybe happy about it? Right. Well, there's probably a lot of people who they may not say it publicly, but privately are probably pretty happy. The Nord Stream is offline now. There was a great deal of opposition to it throughout Europe. The United States was very opposed to this as well. Ukraine has been historically quite opposed to this. was that they didn't want Europe becoming more dependent on Russia for a source of energy because, frankly, I don't think that they saw Russia as being aligned with Western interests. And the people who were against the pipeline's expansion had a geopolitical motive, for sure, probably among others, in that, and were not fans of the project to begin with, and had actually tried to bring pressure, in some instances, on halting it.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was set to go online around the time that the war began, was one that the United States in particular had voiced some pretty strong concerns with as well. With regard to Nord Stream 2, we continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies. And I want to be clear with you today. If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward. So the big photos of it were Germany and Russia and a lot of Europe and the United States was pretty against it. Europe and the United States was pretty against it. And then I guess the destruction of it in the context of the war, several countries would be happy at like an economic blow to Russia, right? Including Ukraine, the US, Poland, etc. Yeah, I think Ukraine, Poland, United States,

Great Britain are all happy to see that Russia has one less source of energy to the West and one less source of revenue. Important to note, Russia did cut off its supply on Nord Stream 1 before the sabotage. So there were some indications that Russia was willing to forgo some of that revenue in order to put pressure on the West. But all of these countries will be happy to see that gas is not flowing right now through the downstream. So I want to go through some of the theories with you. Some of them are pretty wild. Let's get into the theory that Ukrainian elements may be responsible here, though not necessarily the state itself. So this first came out in The New York Times. I know that you and your Washington Post colleagues were quick to sort of match this story. And can you lay out for me how this bombing theory played out? How was it done? Who might have done it according to these reports?

So there are intelligence officials who believe that a pro-Ukrainian group, probably acting without the knowledge of the government, so think of this as like an independent actor doing what they think is in Ukraine's interests, could have sabotaged the pipeline. One data point or kind of clue in this has been a communications intercept that a Western government got a hold of, we still don't know which intelligence service, before the pipeline was hit, in which what are described to us as pro-Ukrainian groups or individuals are discussed or are understood to be discussing attacking the pipeline as a way to harm Russia, essentially. That's the implied motivation here. That's one data point. There are other reasons

why some people who kind of favor the pro-Ukraine group did it theory think that they might be behind it. But they're looking essentially at this intelligence and also at the lack of intelligence or information that they would expect to find pointing the finger back at Russia. Two, what they would be looking for are intercepted communications because the U.S. and its allies have very good penetration of Russian communications. Where they would overhear or see reflections of Russian officials essentially taking credit for the sabotage. And they're just not seeing that when they would expect to. group, possibly operating with a very tiny footprint, went out to the pipeline, somehow planted explosives on it, perhaps by diving down or using a submersible, and then ultimately destroyed three of them or severed those pipelines. Before we get to how they might have done that, this pro-Ukrainian group, you mentioned that there was a lack of evidence that Russia was taking credit. And I just want to pause on that for a minute. Why

would Russia blow up their own pipeline in the first place? This is a very good question. A lot of people who are skeptical of Russia being behind the sabotage were asking for quite some time. If we go back to when the pipelines were blown up last year, last fall, initially, a lot of world leaders came out publicly and pointed the finger at Russia. And they did that because I think they presumed that Russia was trying to play hardball with the West and demonstrate that it was willing to not just cut off the supply of energy and gas, as it actually already had on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but was willing to even go so far that they would destroy infrastructure

that the West relied on for energy. And this was perceived as basically, you know, a very hostile act and a demonstration of force by Russia. The result of a freak coincidence? The Polish prime minister doesn't think so. We do not yet know the details of what happened at Nord Stream, but we can clearly see that it is an act of sabotage, an act that probably marks the next stage in the escalation

of the situation we are dealing with in Ukraine. But some people were very sceptical of this and saying, you know, look, they've already shut the gas off on Nord Stream 1. Germany had actually halted authorization of Nord and saying, you know, look, they've already shut the gas off on Nord Stream 1. Germany had actually halted authorization of Nord Stream 2, but that didn't mean that it would never come back online again. Why would the Russians, you know, actually go out and sabotage their own pipeline and then potentially have to spend billions of dollars to fix it later? So that was why some people felt that it was a little bit of a stretch to think that Russia would take this step when it frankly had already demonstrated that it was willing to sort of, you know, extort Europe over energy by withholding gas on the Nord Stream.

All right. So now take me back to this small pro-Ukrainian group that some intelligence officials are saying they think was responsible for this. I know the German paper Die Zeit introduced this really detail-laden narrative about the sailing yacht Andromeda at about the same time. And so walk me through this part of the story. I know you and your team have followed this thread, too. And how did the German paper say this attack by this pro-Ukrainian group was carried out? So this report came from reporting on the German law enforcement investigation, which is being carried out by Germany's attorney general as a criminal investigation. as a criminal investigation. And what they have found is that this sailing yacht Andromeda was rented from a port in Germany with six individuals, we believe, aboard. It left port and went on a route that took it ultimately into the vicinity of where the explosions on the Piedwine occurred, not far from an island that belongs to Denmark in the Baltic Sea.

Investigators, our understanding is, tipped off to this boat by yet another Western intelligence service whose identity we don't know, but eventually found this boat and had reason to believe that it may have been involved in the sabotage. And when they searched it, actually found traces of explosive residue on a table inside the cabin of the boat, you know, where people sit and where they sleep, that matched the type of explosive used on the

pipeline. And our sources are saying possibly even is the same batch as was used on the pipeline. So there's a very strong forensic link. Investigators further found that a company in Poland, which is owned in turn by a European company, owned in turn by a Ukrainian oligarch or a wealthy Ukrainian, was used to rent a boat. So when the time came to actually facilitate the rental and do the payment, it was essentially chartered through this apparent network of companies.

So this makes investigators very curious initially as to, okay, we have a boat here that we can place in the vicinity of the pipeline based on eyewitness accounts and based on their ability to go back and trace where the boat traveled. And of course, there's this explosive residue inside. They have since grown a bit skeptical that Andromeda could be the only ship that was involved in the sabotage because,

you know, it's a 50-foot sailboat, essentially, with six people aboard. Investigators think roughly a thousand pounds, if not more, of explosives were used. And the pipeline, while you can dive down to it, is actually quite deep and is a fairly challenging dive, even for an experienced diver, and that would take time. So if Andromeda were the only ship involved, it's got six people aboard, quite a lot of explosive cargo, all the tanks possibly to go to the dive, possibly the compression equipment. And so now they're wondering whether or not it may have had help from a larger ship. And to make the intrigue even thicker, they're also wondering whether the ship itself, the Andromeda, was actually a decoy,

which is to say it wasn't directly involved, but basically was put to sea in order to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, which were later discovered to make investigators think that was the ship that was involved and deflect for the actual culprit. Well, what do you think? I mean, I will say that, you know, from the from very early on in this whole story, I was skeptical of Russia's involvement only because I didn't understand what the motivation would be. But of course, Russia has done all kinds of things that seem to run counter to its interest, including baiting Ukraine. pro-Ukrainian group that's operating without the knowledge of the government, a number of intelligence sources I talk to, while they will say, look, we do not know for sure. That is a theory that makes some sense to them. And there is some evidence they think that is circumstantial and then intelligence data that points to it. So my mind is not made up. What I'm trying to do

right now is basically sense where this investigation is going and what intelligence officials law enforcement officials are tracking it think i just have one question about the idea that the andromeda yacht theory is like a decoy like a decoy for for what well we don't know and this is important thing to say that people who are proposing this are not saying what it's a decoy for i think what's motivated what's making them think this, that it could be a decoy, though, is that once they found out about the ship, once the Germans were pointed to the ship, it's important to remember they were tipped off to it,

its trail was apparently fairly easy to unravel. And there are some people who just, I think, think that was a little bit too easy. And it looks a little bit too pat. You know, six experienced divers in demolition, but they left explosive traces on the boat. Yeah. It seems suspicious to people. So I think that there is, you know, this is, you know, really is like a big kind of game of clue. And there's a lot of process of elimination going on.

But I think to the investigators and intelligence officials, they're just looking at the boat and saying, look, if you wanted to create a distraction, which is to say, make people think it was the Andromeda when actually it was some other ship that was maybe larger, that maybe was connected to a government, who knows. investigators and intelligence officers who engage in setting up operations of distraction like this, it strikes them as plausible. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's the case, but they look at that and they say, yeah, that looks like something that we could imagine someone doing if what you're trying to do is throw investigators off the real set. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. There's another theory that I wanted to talk to you, and that's the possibility that the United States is actually behind this. As you said earlier, they also were in opposition to this pipeline. And of course, they're like the most powerful nation in NATO. What do you make of that theory? So the theory that the U.S. was involved, I mean, it has kind of two components. There are those who will point to statements that Joe Biden made not long before the war began. In fact, in a press conference with the German leader, Chancellor Scholz,

where he essentially promised Nord Stream 2 wasn't going to go forward because the war was about to start and people were saying, well, how are the allies going to be against Russia? If you've got Germany in this huge project with Russia, this kind of seems like an obvious conflict of interest. If Russia invades, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. too. We will bring an end to it. How will you do that exactly since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control? We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it. And some people point to that and say Joe Biden was telegraphing, you know, that the United States was going to do something about Nord Stream. The theory has principally, if not singularly, been articulated by a piece that Seymour Hersh wrote, the very famous American investigative reporter, on his Substack page. I can't speak to Seymour Hersh's reporting other

than to note that the story appears to hang entirely on one anonymous source. And traditionally in journalism, we don't source stories, particularly ones of this significance, to single sources who appear to know the entirety of this elaborate plot that the United States was involved in with Norway. None of my reporting, or that I'm aware of any of my colleagues and other publications, points um any support for the scenario that's laid out in that particular story um which again is he's quite elaborate uh and and uh incredibly detailed um and more so than any reporting on the subject

by anyone anywhere which i take to be raises my skepticism, frankly, significantly. The CIA has been on the record denying it. Now you might say, well, of course they would deny it. But I'm skeptical as it's laid out in Mr. Hersh's article that it played out that way. That is not to say that the United States does not have knowledge of who did this. It's not to say that pro-Ukrainian groups or former Ukrainian military who had been once trained by the U.S. or the British could have been involved in this. I'm not saying that's the case, but you can't rule that out based on what we know. I do find it, based on my knowledge of this administration and the way the U.S. intelligence community works, I find it difficult to believe that this president would directly authorize the CIA to sabotage the pipeline or any element of the military or the intelligence community to directly from the president. Everything that Joe Biden has done in the war now for more than a year has been designed to avoid escalation. He talks very publicly about this. You could imagine that Russia might be very upset if someone blew up a pipeline that they were a partner to that could be seen as escalatory. And I don't see what the

motivation would be for the United States blowing up such a valuable piece of infrastructure that belongs to, you know, one of its most important NATO allies, namely Germany. So, you know, I color me a bit skeptical on the idea that the United States was directly responsible for the sabotage. You said before that the detail in the story, you know, that it was these Navy divers, I think, sort of operating like undercover as part of a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea and that they did this with the help of Norway. It's sort of what turns you off from the story. Why? Like, why wouldn't those details make you feel more confident in the story? I'd feel more confident if I could see in the story that they were attributed to more

than one individual. And based on my reading of the story, the narrative, which is quite elaborate, appears to be attributed to one person who, you know, unless Mr. Hirsch has other sources that I'm missing or he's not calling out in the story. And we always try to tell our readers, you know, how Mr. Hirsch has other sources that I'm missing or he's not calling out in the story, and we always try to tell our readers, you know, how many sources we're talking to. I just find it hard to believe that a single individual knows every detail of the story as it's presented. And that, by the plain reading of Mr. Hirsch's article, is what he's telling us, that this one person told him this story. You know. Maybe I've missed a step or two here, but that's just an incredible amount

of information for one person to know. And I mean, I will just note that none of those details have been corroborated by any of the other journalists, including myself, who are actively working on the story. The reporting that it could be a pro-Ukrainian group that has been sourced from definitely more than one intelligence official, U.S. intelligence official. What might you say to someone who might feel like, well, of course, that's what U.S. intelligence officials would be feeding reporters because, you know, they're doing it deliberately to steer them away or steer the narrative away from this being either the U.S. or even like the state of Ukraine. Yeah, I think that's actually a very healthy level of skepticism, right? And to be clear, by no means am I, you know, saying I know who did it, or I definitely know who didn't do it.

I'm just sort of, you know, using my judgment here, my own skepticism. But sure, I mean, you know, a astute reader would say, well, hold on a second, if U.S. intelligence officials are pointing the figure in one way, isn't that what they want you to believe? True, that could be possible. I will only note that, you know that in our reporting, we do not only talk to officials in the United States. And you start to hear similar themes and thrusts coming from people in different countries, which is not to say that they don't all have a motive perhaps to point away from Ukraine or towards some group. But I think we have enough confidence to say, look, there is apparently this intelligence reporting that is out there. We don't have any

reason to believe it's made up. That has caught the attention of a number of people who are investigating this. And then our sources who are privy to the German law enforcement investigation, those officials are saying, look, we don't know if we did this, but we still have a lot of questions as well. And I think that the best that we can do at any one point is try and give readers a snapshot of what our understanding is at the moment. And we as journalists do not have perfect knowledge about what happened here. So, you know, it's always important, and for reporters too, to have some skepticism and to try and, you know, flag for readers what we do know and's responsible here. Like I have been reading some analytical pieces that talk about how like this isn't really being talked about or that there is a sense that you shouldn't talk about it. And just like flesh that out for me. Yeah, I think this is this kind of, you know, goes in the category of, you know, don't go asking questions when you might not like the answer for some officials who who I've spoken to in my college have spoken to have said, you know,

look, this happened a long time ago. We're moving on from this. And frankly, if this does turn out to have some kind of connection back to Ukraine, whether it were the government of Ukraine or people acting when what they thought was the interest of Ukraine, that is going to be a very big political problem. You know, the citizens of Germany might rightly be very upset if they were to learn that a country they've been arming and supporting in its war with Russia had attacked their infrastructure. For those officials who think that Ukraine could have been involved in some way, it's almost better not to know because then if that does become the fact, now if everyone were to see that Ukraine were somehow involved, what is the responsibility

of Ukraine to make amends for that? Will that fracture the alliance? Will that weaken public support for Ukraine? Does that embolden Russia? And it's just very interesting to me that, you know, as you ask people, you know, who do you think blew up Nord Stream? You do often get the response, we really don't know, and we're not really in a rush to find out. All right, Chain, thank you so much for this. It's always great to have you. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.

Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.