Sweden Closes Investigation into Sabotage at Nord Stream Pipeline

Sweden has put a “stop” to the independent investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines that occurred in 2022 in the waters of the Baltic Sea. As Swedish prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said on Wednesday, February 7, after a year and a half of work, “Sweden has concluded that it does not have the necessary jurisdictional authority to find out what happened.”

The Nord Stream 1 (built in 2011) and Nord Stream 2 (built in 2021), over 1200 kilometers long each and running under the Baltic Sea and connecting Russia to Germany for 10 years, were irreparably damaged on September 26, 2022 by two powerful underwater explosions.

Sweden also said that “the materials collected during the investigation” were not specified because they were subject to “secrecy on international judicial cooperation” and had been handed over to German investigators. In addition to Sweden, two other Baltic states, Denmark and Germany, have launched formal investigations. It is not known what stage German investigators are at, but Copenhagen said an announcement on the matter would be made “shortly.”

European countries have reached a unanimous conclusion that gas leaked from three of the pipeline’s four pipes as a result of a “deliberate attack.” Initially, the West claimed that the attack could have been carried out by Russia itself, but no evidence has emerged to support this thesis. Following Sweden’s statement, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “now we will have to see what Germany, which has lost a lot as a result of these attacks, has to say.” In conclusion, Peskov recalled that Russia had repeatedly asked to participate in the European investigation, but these “more than legitimate requests were rejected.”