RTSun, 18 Aug 2024 16:22 UTC
© Getty Images / Omar MarquesDonald Tusk delivers a press statement in Warsaw, Poland, July 2, 2024
Whoever funded and carried out the sabotage operation should shut up, Donald Tusk has said
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has urged those responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines to "keep quiet," as intelligence sources in Germany point to a joint Polish-Ukrainian plot to destroy the underwater lines.According to German media, prosecutors in Berlin issued an arrest warrant in June for a Ukrainian national known as 'Vladimir Z' in connection with the destruction of the pipelines. Working with a team of saboteurs, Vladimir Z is believed to have rented a yacht in Poland, sailed to a site in the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm, and planted explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.
German investigators filed a cooperation request with their Polish counterparts in the hope of locating the suspect, who is said to have been tracked to a location west of Warsaw before disappearing, German state broadcaster ARD reported.
In a post on X on Saturday, Tusk appeared keen to quash any attempts to investigate the attack.
"To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2," he wrote. "The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet."
According to ARD, Poland, despite EU inter-state regulations, has failed to respond to Berlin's request for cooperation. In an interview with
Die Welt on Thursday,
the former president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, August Hanning, claimed that Poland was likely involved in facilitating the attack."The way it seems is that it was a Ukrainian team that... operated there," he said, referring to Poland. However, he added, "this was of course only possible with support from the land."
"When we look at the map... pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged here, and I think not only agencies... I think that this was an arrangement between [people] at the top level in Ukraine and in Poland," he speculated.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski rejected Hanning's accusations, telling the Polsat broadcaster on Friday that "Poland did not take part in anything."Back in January, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Poland's internal security agency
refused to turn over testimony from eyewitnesses who encountered the yacht's crew, withheld CCTV footage from the Polish port of Kolobrzeg where the vessel was moored, and "failed to answer queries, obfuscated or gave contradictory information," when pressed by German investigators.
The Nord Stream lines were destroyed in September 2022, more than a year before Tusk took office. However, Poland's previous conservative government appeared to openly approve of the attack, with then-Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski sharing an image of a giant gas leak at the blast site along with the caption "Thank you, USA" within hours of the explosions.While German investigators have apparently coalesced around the idea that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, an alternate theory put forward by American journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the CIA was responsible. Citing sources within the intelligence community, Hersh argued that CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy planted remotely-triggered bombs on the lines last summer, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover.
The aim of the CIA operation, Hersh's sources allege, was to sever Germany's main gas links to Russia, removing the opportunity for Berlin to lift sanctions on Moscow and resume gas deliveries.
Officials in Kiev
maintain that Russia blew up its own pipelines, a claim that has been ridiculed by the Kremlin.
Comment:
1)
Link to the Tweet by Donald Tusk:
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Donald Tusk's reaction to the speculations of Polish involvement is interesting, he could have kept quiet, but instead Prime Minister Tusk addresses the issue of the elephant in the room, by trying to close the door on it.
Imagine an interview:
Prime Minister Tusk, in a recent Tweet you wrote that "To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2," ... "The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet." Could you name a few other cases where you would give the same advice? [Scandals in Poland and the EU?]
Prime Minister, you refer to the "initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2". Who are they in your opinion, and if they asked for your advice, to whom do you suggest they apologize?
Comment to possible questions: If the initiators and patrons refer to the Germans and Russians who build it, Tusk apparently wants them to suck it up and apologize to Poland, America, Ukraine and others. If he by initiators and patrons mean those who planned and sponsored the sabotage, the question is why he condones destruction of infrastructure in international waters, worth billions.
2) The recent or renewed allegation that Poland had been involved was published in this article:
Poland probably involved in Nord Stream blasts - ex-German spymaster If one wishes to be critical about the source of the claim that Poland might be involved, one could say that August Hanning has been retired from service for almost 15 years, but he might have connections. From one page
there is:
From 1986 to 1990, Hanning was a secret protection officer at the West German Permanent Mission in East Germany. In this role, he was also responsible for exchanging prisoners for cash. In 1990 he moved back to the Federal Chancellery, where he became a close employee of the intelligence leader Bernd Schmidbauer. In 1996 he was appointed department head.
On December 17, 1998, he succeeded Hansjörg Geiger as President of the Federal Intelligence Service. During his tenure, the decision was made to move the BND from its traditional headquarters at Pullach to Berlin. Hanning was of the opinion that the secret service should also be locally close to the government, and commissioned a huge and conspicuous new headquarters in central Berlin.
On December 1, 2005, Hanning was appointed State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, with responsibility for police matters, internal security, migration, integration, refugees, European harmonization, crisis management and other things. He was pensioned on November 10, 2009. His successor was Klaus-Dieter Fritsche.
Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
In December 2002, Hanning wrote to the head of the CIA, George Tenet, telling that the informant Curveball's information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could not be confirmed.[1] Nevertheless, US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented this uncertain source to the UN Security Council in February 2003 as the rationale for the Iraq war.
It is almost a certainty that people like August Hanning know that little goes on in Europe which the US does not have a finger in or is informed about. They also know that the Nord Stream sabotage was an operation on the level of the military, and that the countries including Germany work together. Someone in Germany very likely knew the sabotage was coming, but August Hanning does not go that far.
3) In the comments to the Tweet by Polish PM Donald Tusk, there was this video with clips of how the Nord Stream sabotage was spun in the early days to be the work of Russia. For many who did not follow the news later, that may still be the impression. Perhaps this aspect of the Nord Stream sabotage is worth recalling now that the West and Ukraine are working for creating some kind of radiological weapon/dirty nuke hoping they can stick it to Russia.
Comment:
1) Link to the Tweet by Donald Tusk:
Donald Tusk's reaction to the speculations of Polish involvement is interesting, he could have kept quiet, but instead Prime Minister Tusk addresses the issue of the elephant in the room, by trying to close the door on it.
Imagine an interview:
Prime Minister Tusk, in a recent Tweet you wrote that "To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2," ... "The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet." Could you name a few other cases where you would give the same advice? [Scandals in Poland and the EU?]
Prime Minister, you refer to the "initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2". Who are they in your opinion, and if they asked for your advice, to whom do you suggest they apologize?
Comment to possible questions: If the initiators and patrons refer to the Germans and Russians who build it, Tusk apparently wants them to suck it up and apologize to Poland, America, Ukraine and others. If he by initiators and patrons mean those who planned and sponsored the sabotage, the question is why he condones destruction of infrastructure in international waters, worth billions.
2) The recent or renewed allegation that Poland had been involved was published in this article: Poland probably involved in Nord Stream blasts - ex-German spymaster If one wishes to be critical about the source of the claim that Poland might be involved, one could say that August Hanning has been retired from service for almost 15 years, but he might have connections. From one page there is: It is almost a certainty that people like August Hanning know that little goes on in Europe which the US does not have a finger in or is informed about. They also know that the Nord Stream sabotage was an operation on the level of the military, and that the countries including Germany work together. Someone in Germany very likely knew the sabotage was coming, but August Hanning does not go that far.
3) In the comments to the Tweet by Polish PM Donald Tusk, there was this video with clips of how the Nord Stream sabotage was spun in the early days to be the work of Russia. For many who did not follow the news later, that may still be the impression. Perhaps this aspect of the Nord Stream sabotage is worth recalling now that the West and Ukraine are working for creating some kind of radiological weapon/dirty nuke hoping they can stick it to Russia.