U.S. officials say they have uncovered new intelligence suggesting that a pro-Ukranian group is responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last summer.
According to reporting from the New York Times, U.S. officials said they have no evidence that Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky or any of his top officials are involved in the attack, or that they directed any of the suspects.
The officials briefed on the intelligence did not indicate there was a high degree of confidence in the new assessment, explaining to the Times that they are “divided about how much weight to put on the new information.”
Multiple countries launched investigations into who was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline last September. Almost immediately, Russia was considered a suspect, though proponents of this theory had no evidence and specious reasoning to explain why Russia would blow up its own key energy pipeline.
In the aftermath of the attack, the Kremlin called the incident “terrorism” while dismissing allegations of its own involvement as “stupid.”
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on March 7 that Washington was still waiting for the conclusion of ongoing investigations by Germany, Sweden, and Denmark.
“We do believe, and the president has said this, that it is an act of sabotage. But we need to let these investigations conclude and only then should we be looking at what follow-on actions might or may not be appropriate,” Reuters quoted Kirby as saying.
News of the latest intelligence report on the incident comes one month after Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour “Sy” Hersh published an exposé pointing to a cadre of senior U.S. officials as the culprits.
Hersh’s account relies on an interview with an unnamed source, who says that an interagency group — including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, State Department and Treasury Department — hatched a plan to covertly destroy the Nord Stream pipeline in a way that would leave “no overt clue” the U.S. was behind the attack.
Within days, Russia blasted the story, accusing the U.S. of International terrorism, while challenging U.S. officials to prove they were not behind the attack.
Both the CIA and White House have dismissed Hersh’s report, calling it “fiction” and “disinformation.”
