Russian ships snapped at Nord Stream site days before blast

Danish military photographs add new mystery to probe into who attacked pipeline in the Baltic Sea.

The leak at the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline last September. Picture: AFP

Denmark’s military says it photographed a number of Russian vessels near the blast site of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage days before the explosions took place.

Russian maritime activity isn’t unusual in the Baltic Sea, where the explosions that took the natural gas pipelines out of commission last year took place.

A senior European official familiar with the investigation into the explosions said the movements of the Russian vessels had long been known and had been dismissed as unlikely to be connected with the attack.

Still, evidence of the Russian ships so close to the site of the blasts just days before the explosions has caused a fresh stir around one of the most closely guarded investigations into who is responsible for the attacks.

On September 26, a series of underwater explosions tore apart three of the four main Nord Stream pipes, which are built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. The blasts were powerful enough to register with seismologic measuring stations. Russia and Western governments agreed the blasts were sabotage.

Four days earlier, on September 22, a Danish naval patrol vessel, P524 Nymfen, took 112 photographs of several Russian vessels near the blast site, the Danish Defence Command said in a response to a freedom of information request from The Wall Street Journal.

The command declined to release the photographs because of what it said was their intelligence value. It added, following another freedom of information request, that 26 of the photographs were of a Russian vessel designated as SS-750, which can be equipped with a small submarine.

Following the pipeline sabotage, initial suspicions in many European capitals focused on Russia, which denied any involvement. US officials are investigating the possibility that a pro-Ukrainian group was responsible.

Investigators in Germany have focused on the possible role of a sailing yacht called Andromeda and its six passengers, some of whom had Ukrainian passports, according to German officials briefed on the probe. Some analysts have expressed scepticism that a sailing yacht could have played a key role in such an act of sabotage, involving several explosions at an underwater depth of 80m. The photos of the Russian ship have provided fuel for alternative theories.

The chance that the Russian vessel captured in the photo was near the blast site without being involved in the explosion four days later “is infinitely small,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a commander at the Danish navy and an analyst at the University of Copenhagen. “I don’t have a smoking gun,” he said. “But in my opinion there is no doubt as to who was behind it.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said that allegations it was involved in the Nord Stream sabotage were “part of the Western misinformation campaign to ensure that those who ordered and perpetrated this act of international terrorism are never identified”.

Four Nordic broadcasters have reported that at least three Russian ships able to perform underwater operations were present near the blast sites between June and September last year. The ships included the Russian naval research vessel Sibiriakov, the tugboat SB-123 and a third, unidentified vessel, according to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. The vessels sailed with their position transmitters turned off, but were tracked using intercepted radio communications.

The Wall Street Journal