Six Russian naval vessels 'were detected near site of Nord Stream pipeline five days before it was sabotaged'By ELIZABETH HAIGH
26 March 2023
A convoy of six Russian naval vessels was spotted near the Nord Stream pipeline just five days before it was sabotaged, it was reported yesterday.
Three of the four pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany were seriously damaged by explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm on September 26 last year, disrupting global supply.
Russia has always denied any responsibility for the attack, and blamed western powers or Ukrainian groups, but new information now suggests its ships were in the area in the days before the massive blasts.
It is thought that hundreds of kilograms of explosives and equipment would have been required to pull off the scale of the damage seen last September, which occurred 80m below sea level.
But it has now been claimed that a Swedish warship may have spotted the Russian convoy and tracked it, possibly being aware of it for as long as three days, The Times reports.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea were hit by a series of unexplained explosions last September, in what Moscow called an act of 'international terrorism'.
A report by open-source intelligence researchers now claims to have identified abnormal activity by a Danish patrol vessel and a Swedish warship, which may suggest they had spotted suspicious activity.
The researchers say the ships appeared to have seen something unusual on September 22 or 23, when they were allegedly tracking a contingent of Russian naval ships which had broken away from a larger exercise three days before.
These claims, first revealed in the German news site T-Online, originated from sources in the security services and detailed the convoy including two Russian tugs, a surveillance ship and a submarine rescue ship SS-750, built in 1990.
The SS-750 has its own mini-submarine, called the AS-26, which can reach depths of 80m and carry loads of up to 50kg.
'It would make absolute sense to use something like the AS-26 for such an attack,' Danish corvette captain and military analyst Johannes Riber told T-Online.
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Source:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11904987/Six-Russian-naval-vessels-detected-near-site-Nord-Stream-pipeline-five-days-sabotage.html
