As Denmark and Sweden Close Their Nord Stream Probes, the Countries’ Politicians Abet the Cover-Up*
Parliamentarians, initially engaging in saber-rattling and making baseless claims about the attack on the natural gas pipelines, are suddenly silent. Will the German government and MPs do the same?
The damaged Nord Stream 2 Line A in the exclusive economic zone of Sweden filmed by a drone from the Baltic Explorer. The image is from the May 2023 EA Expedition to all four blast sites. I went on this expedition.
Denmark last week joined Sweden in shutting down its investigation into the September 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines carrying Russian natural gas to Europe, citing the lack of “sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case.”
The attack on the $20 billion Nord Stream pipelines stands as the largest instance of industrial sabotage in history and the century’s most urgent geopolitical mystery. Twice, in February and then March 2023, the United States blocked a Russian request at the United Nations Security Council to establish an international investigation into the blasts. The disruption of the supply of inexpensive Russian gas also represents a significant economic setback for Germany, resulting in widespread deindustrialization. Both the IMF and OECD anticipate that the German economy will be the worst-performing among advanced economies for the second consecutive year.
All and any detailed and serious reporting has either implicated the US or Ukraine in the crime. None of the data obtained during our independent expedition to all four blast sites indicates that Russia may be the perpetrator. The undisguised propaganda excreted from multiple “experts” appearing on mainstream TV news programs and “exclusive,” “investigative” reports in corporate news outlets, leveling evidence-free accusations against the Kremlin, has utterly failed to endure.
The underwater explosions occurred along the floor of the Baltic Sea within the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark, and the pipelines made landfall in Germany. Following the detection of the leaks, Berlin, Stockholm and Copenhagen each initiated separate criminal probes.
Sweden closed its investigation on February 7, concluding that Swedish jurisdiction did not apply. Swedish authorities stated that they had shared material from their inquiry with Germany, which could potentially be used as evidence in the German probe.
Despite the severity of the economic fallout from the attack, thumping geopolitical reverberations and meticulous reporting explicitly detailing either US or Ukrainian culpability, Denmark and Sweden have shirked their responsibility to reveal who is behind the sabotage. The two countries have sidestepped any sense of public accountability, issuing separate press releases following their 16-month-long investigations.
The two press releases were approximately 150 and 220 words, respectively. Both displayed hostility toward transparency in government, open society and a free press. The Danish release, in particular, nightmarishly warned that “Copenhagen Police is not able to provide further comments and will not be available for interviews about the investigation.”
Danish and Swedish officials boasted about their “complex and comprehensive” (Denmark) and “systematic and thorough” (Sweden) investigations. Yet their public findings amounted to nothing but deliberate obfuscation that belonged more to the provenance of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Ministry of Truth than modern Western democracies.
The communiqués chillingly admit that all further information is to be under the secret dominion of the impregnable walls of each nation’s secret services. “Any additional cooperation that may be required in this matter will occur not as part of a formal investigation but within the framework of the Swedish Security Service’s ongoing operational work,” reads Sweden’s statement. Meanwhile, at the end of the Danish press release, it says, “PET [Danish Security and Intelligence Services] continues to follow developments in the threat landscape and initiates – together with other relevant authorities – the measures deemed necessary to protect Denmark’s critical infrastructure.”
For Dr. Ralf Stegner, a member of the governing center-left Social Democrats and chair of the Committee of Inquiry and the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Nonproliferation in the Bundestag, the secrecy is unjustifiable. “I don’t understand why we don’t have proof yet,” he told me. “I can’t imagine any comparable event, where months later, you still don’t know anything.”
“To keep this secret, from a democratic point of view, is not a desirable situation, because in a democracy, it’s hard to argue that there are things nobody should know,” Stegner added.
Since the first few months after the attack, secrecy and silence have also prevailed in Sweden’s Parliament, the Riksdag. Discovering who is responsible for the largest act of industrial terrorism in history has been roundly evaded by Swedish MPs and members of the coalition government. At the time of writing, not a single Swedish MP or member of the administration has asked the Swedish investigators for any further details following the issuance of their Orwellian press release, let alone made any attempt at serious debate in the Riksdag.
The willful evasion of the Swedish government and MPs not only constitutes a brazen dereliction of duty but also exposes the ideological prisons their geopolitical convictions inhabit. In the months immediately following the sabotage, parliamentarians from across the political spectrum expressed grave concerns about how to better defend critical European infrastructure, with nearly all their statements coming in the context of wrongly apportioning blame to Russia.
The Nord Stream sabotage is “a concern for the whole EU but of course especially for Sweden, Denmark and Germany…and it is important and good that you gather facts to get clarity on who is behind the attacks,” said Andreas Norlén, Speaker of the Riksdag, in October 2022. “However, we also need to learn lessons for the future and see how we can strengthen the EU’s resilience against hybrid attacks and complex security threats.”
In December 2022, Malin Björk of Sweden’s Center Party said, “It is an action that in itself had fit in well as a method of Russian hybrid warfare to reach strategic advantages vis-à-vis Europe in the energy sector.”
Similarly, shortly after the attack, remarks by Swedish MPs from both left and right parties seemed to indicate that they knew Russia had committed the crime. “We were reminded a few weeks ago when they blew up Nord Stream,” said Thomas Morell of the Sweden Democrats. “The Russian vehicles that move freely in Sweden can prepare attacks, for example, on our electrical infrastructure.”
But as Russia’s innocence became clearer, Swedish politicians’ interest in the “facts to get clarity on who is behind the attack” and their unsubstantiated claims in the Riksdag petered out, degenerating into vague observations, such as the “leak from Nord Stream affected emissions very negatively, so we have to make sure it was a one-off.”
Danish investigators and the Danish government gave equally full reign to shameless confidentiality. Not a single Danish MP or a lone member of the government has publicly requested information about the Danish investigation’s non-findings following last week’s meager press release. In fact, since August 11, 2023, not one MP has even asked for an update on the status of the investigation. The feigned seriousness of this one question, addressed to the Danish minister of justice, is illustrated by its careless omission of Nord Stream 1: “Will the minister state what the status is in relation to the investigation into who was behind the sabotage on Nord Stream 2?"
The official response to that sole question came on September 7, 2023, and it amounted crude doublespeak:
For the purpose of answering the question, the Ministry of Justice has obtained one statement from the National Police, which has stated the following: The National Police has obtained a statement for the purpose of the answer from the Copenhagen Police. On this occasion, Copenhagen Police can state that Copenhagen’s Police and PET in autumn 2022 set up a joint investigation group with a view to handling the investigation of the incidents that led to extensive damage to Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea. The incidents are still being investigated and there is close cooperation with relevant authorities. It is at present not possible to state when the investigation is expected to be completed. The National Police can rely on the opinion of the Copenhagen Police.
Much the same as the overripe rhetoric of their Swedish counterparts, the initially confident assertions of Danish MPs and the government accusing Russia devolved into vague concerns about “environmental protection,” or listless platitudes about how “it is good to see that emergency cooperation is now being further strengthened.”
“I cannot recall a situation as serious as the one we are in right now. The world has become a more dangerous place, and we were reminded of that…when several explosions hit Nord Stream 1 and 2,” said Pia Olsen Dyhr, party chairwoman of the Danish Socialist People’s Party, in October 2022. “The citizens have a legitimate expectation that we, 179 members of the Danish Parliament, will do our utmost to find solutions that bring Denmark and the Danes fairly unscathed through the perfect storm of misery – just fairly unscathed.”
Chairwoman Olsen went on to ask: “Will we see more in the same line as the explosions on the gas pipelines last week? Are we risking an election campaign where foreign powers will try to influence our democratic process? It's actually likely.”
Chairwoman Olsen has yet to either publicly inquire about the attack or provide any evidence for Russian meddling in the Danish elections. (I contacted Chairwoman Olsen, but she offered no comment.)
To Denmark, Sweden and Germany, an admission that the perpetrator is either the US or Ukraine, or both acting in concert, would be mortifying. All three countries’ support for Ukraine in the war hasn’t wavered. Each of them has provided billions of dollars in weapons, while the US is their purported defender against perceived Russian aggression. And, after decades of heated debate, Sweden is set to become the newest NATO member.
Denmark, a founding member of NATO, has been complicit in the alliance’s war crimes, as well as assisting in covering them up. NATO’s documented history of aggressive militarism and war crimes has made a mockery of its pretensions as a “defensive alliance.” Denmark, too, was an abettor in the infamous “coalition of the willing” that illegally put into motion the 2003 Iraq war based on illusory WMDs – a bloodbath in which estimated casualties from fighting range from 151,000 to 300,000 to 600,000 people, according to this 2023 report.
Sweden and Germany, by contrast, have at least provided the public with small clues as to who isn’t the author of the attack. Following his statement that it wasn’t “logical” that Russia was behind the sabotage, Mats Ljungqvist, a senior prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation, said the reported Russian ship movements was “not new information to us.” Echoing the Swedish assessment, it was reported that German investigators said the Russian ships’ “positions have been mapped and the conclusion must be that they have not been in such a place that they could have carried out the deed.”
Nevertheless, it came as no surprise to those following the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage story that Sweden, in particular, refused to unmask the perpetrator: The Swedish press release says the “investigation was opened in order to examine whether the sabotage targeted Sweden and thereby threatened the security of Sweden.” This incredibly limited investigative scope aligns with what Ljungqvist said as early as last May, stating the objective was to “find out whether Sweden or Swedish infrastructure has been used for the attack.”
Despite geopolitical pressure and the certain embarrassment of acknowledging that its economy has been butchered by an act of terrorism perpetrated by an ally, there may, however, be reason to believe that Germany – now the only country with an investigation still open – will possibly defend its interests. For one, unlike their peers in Sweden and Denmark, Germany MPs have been consistent in pressuring the government to solve the crime. In the Bundestag, from the initial days following the attack to the present, detailed and probing questions have been posed to the German administration and investigators.
Second, Germany (perhaps after Russia) is by far the country that has undergone the most economic hardship resulting from the sabotage. That hasn’t stopped some analysts from arguing that among the causes of Germany’s economic woes is its decision in April 2023 to close its last three nuclear power plants. But this argument crumbles under scrutiny: The Nord Stream pipelines’ potential energy supply was equivalent to that of over a whopping 73 nuclear reactors. Nord Stream 1 alone delivered to Germany up to 59 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. That volume is as much as a staggering 66% of the country’s gas consumption, and 42% of its supply. So it would be poetic justice if Germany opts to defend its sovereignty by revealing who is behind the attack.
Third, not too long ago, Germany demonstrated it had the backbone to resist American imperialism. In 2013, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly rebuked the Obama administration after receiving information that the US National Security Agency had bugged her phone. Berlin called the spying “completely unacceptable.” A noticeably embarrassed Obama administration initially lied, denying the tapping. But subsequent revelations offered proof, forcing Obama to apologize to the chancellor. And perhaps the most notable instance of German independence from American militarism was when it opposed the illegal, US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Fourth, a German spokesperson last week said that the government remains “very interested” in solving the crime. It's worth noting, though, that governments almost never deserve to be taken at their word.
Fifth, Germany is one of the most powerful nations on Earth. With a population approximately five times larger than that of Denmark and Sweden combined, and a GDP that dwarfs its northern neighbors', Germany holds significant influence.
Germany is now solely entrusted with the democratic duty of solving the most severe act of industrial sabotage in history and the most pressing geopolitical mystery of modern times. Unfortunately, both Sweden and Denmark have already crouched down in fear, concealing the truth from the public. At the time of writing, the headline news on the Danish Parliament’s official website was “The Danish Parliament to advise the Ukrainian Parliament on democracy.” The irony couldn’t be thicker.
*A version of this article originally appeared in Diario16. It can be read in Spanish here.