Nord Stream sabotage ‘not our exercise’: Ukraine defence minister
STOCKHOLM: The Ukrainian authorities was not concerned within the sabotage final yr of the Nord Stream fuel pipelines within the Baltic Sea, the nation’s defence minister mentioned Wednesday.
“This isn’t our exercise,” Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov advised reporters in Stockholm forward of a gathering with EU defence ministers, in response to a report in The New York Occasions on Tuesday that US officers had seen new intelligence indicating a “pro-Ukrainian group” was answerable for the sabotage.
The Occasions report mentioned US officers had no proof implicating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky within the pipeline bombing, and it didn’t establish the supply of the intelligence or the group concerned.
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However the assault benefitted Ukraine by severely damaging Russia’s capability to reap hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by promoting pure fuel to Western Europe.
It additionally stoked the surge in power costs weighing on key Ukrainian allies, notably Germany.
The intelligence recommended that the perpetrators behind the sabotage had been “opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia”, the Occasions report mentioned.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted that “Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no details about ‘pro-Ukraine sabotage teams’.”
The pipelines had been ruptured by subsea explosives in late September, seven months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
Authorities in Germany, Sweden and Denmark have opened inquiries into the incident.
In keeping with separate German media stories, German investigators imagine the unidentified group was made up of 5 males and one lady utilizing professionally falsified passports, and who rented a ship that set sail from the northern German port of Rostock.
German investigators discovered traces of explosives on the desk within the boat’s cabin, in response to the report by German broadcasters ARD and SWR and the weekly journal Die Zeit.
