[B0ycey]

Zelenskyy ran on a peace platform and ending the war on Donbass.

When has a manifesto pledge ever been adhered to?

As I have said Skinster, we disagree here. We have both made our case. But even so, I do wonder why the submissive actor is going to Washington to beg for more weapons and trying to convince Republicans to back the war when the controller as you claim is in already in Washington pulling the strings. Surely the master would hand over all that is needed without being asked.

[Negotiator]

First of all, I dont believe this war will end, until Russia wins the war and simply dictates conditions. Zelensky will never negotiate.



However China has made another push for peace talks:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/2 ... kraine-war

China has tried to position itself as a peacemaker and neutral arbiter in the conflict, although it has refused to condemn Moscow over the invasion.

If they would condemn Moscow over the invasion, they would follow western propaganda and thus wouldnt be accepted as arbiter by Russia, thus the very first sentence of this article is already completely idiotic. Good start.

In February, on the first anniversary of the war, it released a position paper on how to bring about an end to the fighting, but the proposals received a lukewarm response in Moscow and Kyiv.

Another idiotic statement.

If you follow the link given: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/2 ... ine-crisis

You'll find that China has made no such position paper at all, but that the text in question proposes very general principles of conduct between countries.

Not limited to the ukraine conflict and not even actually limited to war times.

Something a position paper could be based on, sure, but not a position paper on how to do peace in Ukraine specifically at all.

I am also not aware of any negative reaction from the russians to this paper. Which would be really unusual and would be big news since the west only waits for any signs that Russia and China dont like each other. Since the west almost feverishly fantasizes about such differences at every occasion, such a split would have been big news.

I AM aware that the west doesnt actually like this paper at all, since it for example proposes the abandonment of unilateral sanctions. All of them. That would include for example the sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela.

China, one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, wants to “continue playing a constructive role”, Han added. He did not elaborate.

What is there to "elaborate" ? He is just now making another push for peace negotiations ??

“As the largest developing country, China is a natural member of the Global South. It breathes the same breath with other developing countries and shares the same future with them,” Han said.

China, thanks to its massive population, is literally the most powerful industrialized country on the whole planet.

They might help other developing countries to walk the path that China has walked, and they might not have finished the path to their own full industrialization just yet, but still calling them a developing country themselves is a massive stretch nowadays.

They are literally the next, third nuclear superpower, despite their military spending at a relatively moderate 1.6% of GDP (2.2% world average, 3.5% USA, 4.1% Russia). They have their very own space program and their very own space station. Thanks to their geographic location, they have the ideal position to start rockets, too, with the vast space of the pacific ocean for failing missles to land on with no damage to anyone.

However this statement is another confirmation that China indeed wants to help other developing nations to industialize, too. Something the west has always promised, but never fulfilled.

[Rugoz]

First of all, I dont believe this war will end, until Russia Ukraine wins the war and simply dictates conditions.

Putin has to suck Kim Jong Un's little dick because Russia's artillery systems are being decimated.

It's only a matter of time.

Zelensky will never negotiate.

Russia made it clear that the recognition of the 4 annexed regions, which is more territory than Russia currently controls, is a precondition for peace. No Ukrainian president will agree to that.

[Negotiator]

Putin has to suck Kim Jong Un's little dick because Russia's artillery systems are being decimated.

It is the USA, not Russia, who had to publically declare, by no lesser person than the president himself, in mid August that they are out of artillery shells [and as substitution have to send cluster bombs to Ukraine instead now, which are a very poor substitute if you fight tanks or fortified positions].

There is no sign that Russia has any problems in this regard, or any shortage of any other kind of military goods, and North Korea isnt even likely to be able to produce the quality that Russia would demand for military goods.

Russia and North Korea always had great relations. Since both countries are now heavily sanctioned by the west anyway, there is absolutely no reason anymore for Russia not to continue and intensify such relations. The official protocols of the meeting between Putin and Yong Un are full of reminders about the friendly history between the two nations.

What Russia wants from North Korea is [civilian] workers because their economy is booming and they have a shortage of workers. North Korea obviously wants help from Russia to further develop their country.

Russia made it clear that the recognition of the 4 annexed regions, which is more territory than Russia currently controls, is a precondition for peace. No Ukrainian president will agree to that.

Yep. Hence it will be dictated. Thats what I said.

[Rugoz]

It is the USA, not Russia, who had to publically declare, by no lesser person than the president himself, in mid August that they are out of artillery shells [and as substitution have to send cluster bombs to Ukraine instead now, which are a very poor substitute if you fight tanks or fortified positions].

"run out" in the sense that strategic stockpiles have been reduced to a level the US considers too low. Production in the US and Europe will ramp up in 2024 though.

There is no sign that Russia has any problems in this regard, or any shortage of any other kind of military goods, and North Korea isnt even likely to be able to produce the quality that Russia would demand for military goods.

Russia now fires ~8k shells per day while it used to fire ~50k per day in the past. It absolutely does ration shells.

More importantly, I didn't say shells, I said artillery systems, including barrels. Those cannot be produced as easily. Another case of "it will last as long as the Soviet stockpiles last".

Russia and North Korea always had great relations. Since both countries are now heavily sanctioned by the west anyway, there is absolutely no reason anymore for Russia not to continue and intensify such relations. The official protocols of the meeting between Putin and Yong Un are full of reminders about the friendly history between the two nations.

What Russia wants from North Korea is [civilian] workers because their economy is booming and they have a shortage of workers. North Korea obviously wants help from Russia to further develop their country.

You have any idea how comically stupid this sounds?

[annatar1914]

Excellent PR move by Zelensky:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/zelensky-ask ... 16032.html

The truth of a thing always comes out one way or another.

[Negotiator]

"run out" in the sense that strategic stockpiles have been reduced to a level the US considers too low.

Why yes, its likely, if not safe to assume that the USA has some iron reserves of unknown amount for self defense.

But either way Ukraine is not getting that, so why would that be relevant for the Ukraine war situation ?

Russia now fires ~8k shells per day while it used to fire ~50k per day in the past. It absolutely does ration shells.

This is an extremely ignorant statement.

There is literally no relation at all between the question how many shells are spent during peace time and the question how big stockpiles a country will keep in reserve in case of war. Ammunition can be stored for about 20 years, after that it turns unreliable and has to be replaced. So whatever reserves you want to keep, you have to balance production for these 20 years to keep the same level of stockpiles.

Russia has been historically attacked multiple times (Napoleon, german Kaiser during WW1, Hitler) and has thus a very strong military tradition. For example, conscription is mandatory in Russia.

That means not only do they keep large stockpiles of ammunition during peace time.

That also means they keep large amounts of ammunition production capacity in the backhand, too. Which has now been activated. And apparently Russia is ramping up production even more, since they clearly prepare not just for a war with Ukraine, but for the case of NATO would be starting an invention in Ukraine.

Hence the lack of workers, as I've mentioned.

Also the russian military industrial complex is state owned, i.e. unlike the US one they arent optimized for making the most profit (and frankly being extremely corrupt), but for actually winning wars.

You have any idea how comically stupid this sounds?

So you helplessly revert to the good old Kamala Harris strategy of laughing away any facts you have no answer to.

Whatever. Reality will teach you better anyway.

[Rugoz]

This is an extremely ignorant statement.

There is literally no relation at all between the question how many shells are spent during peace time and the question how big stockpiles a country will keep in reserve in case of war. Ammunition can be stored for about 20 years, after that it turns unreliable and has to be replaced. So whatever reserves you want to keep, you have to balance production for these 20 years to keep the same level of stockpiles.

With "the past" I meant Spring/Summer 2022. Back then, Russia was firing ~50k shells a day, and because of that made slow but significant progress. Not anymore.

Also the russian military industrial complex is state owned, i.e. unlike the US one they arent optimized for making the most profit (and frankly being extremely corrupt), but for actually winning wars.

If the state is corrupt as fuck, as in Russia, I don't see the benefit of the "military industrial complex" being state-owned.

Your suggestion that Russia is good at fighting (conventional) wars while the US is not is really something.

Whatever. Reality will teach you better anyway.

72 hours to take Kiev.

Kim Jong Un's visit had nothing to do with weapon supplies.

Quite the fantasy world you live in.

[Rancid]

Putin has to suck Kim Jong Un's little dick because Russia's artillery systems are being decimated.

The good news is, this tells us NK has no intent on starting a war with the south.

[QatzelOk]

The good news is, this tells us NK has no intent on starting a war with the south.

Yeah, 'our' South Korean bases are safe (for now) from all those global empires out there.

[Rancid]

Yeah, 'our' South Korean bases are safe (for now) from all those global empires out there.

I thought the CIA were the bosses.

[GandalfTheGrey]

Ukrainians can now basically hit whatever they like on Crimea.

I wonder how many buyers are lining up to buy Russian made air defense systems now

[Negotiator]

Ukraine estimated to have 20 million people left (down from 34 million, though I remember that at the start of the invasion the Wikipedia number was 40 million).

https://jamestown.org/program/ukraines- ... threshold/

P.s.: Maybe a fair warning, this is an extremely conservative source. So dont expect me to agree with much of anything with this article. But they do give an estimate of the remaining population of Ukraine that aligns with estimates from other sources that Ukraine, thanks to migration and the loss of the four regions, is now reduced to a population of 20 million.

[Rugoz]

Ukraine estimated to have 20 million people left (down from 34 million, though I remember that at the start of the invasion the Wikipedia number was 40 million).

https://jamestown.org/program/ukraines- ... threshold/

P.s.: Maybe a fair warning, this is an extremely conservative source. So dont expect me to agree with much of anything with this article. But they do give an estimate of the remaining population of Ukraine that aligns with estimates from other sources that Ukraine, thanks to migration and the loss of the four regions, is now reduced to a population of 20 million.

Calling the largest refugee crisis of the 21st century "migration" is really something. Despicable, as usual.

The numbers are wrong, obviously. It's 37m (Excluding Russian occupied territory). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograph ... %20Ukraine.

[Rancid]

I wonder how many buyers are lining up to buy Russian made air defense systems now

This is another side effect that isn't discussed too much. The demand for Russian weapons has dropped. For example, India is re-evaluating it's defense needs as a result of this war. Part of it is they are investing in an home grown defense complex, but also considering looking to buy western weapons systems as well. My guess is this is at least one reason of many as to why basically all western nations are very quiet about that row between Canada and India at the moment. They don't want to ruin business relations with India (defense and non-defense business).

[Negotiator]

German sources (ZDF) say that the USA will provide ATACMS. And that "pressure on Germany to provide Taurus raises".


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/0 ... is-russia/

Seymour Hersh: “It’s All Lies. The War is Over. Russia has Won.”

“The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going,“ a senior US intel official told Hersh. “The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.” [...]

I hope this is correct and the pointless dying is finally at an end.

In an interview with The Economist, Zelensky issued a veiled threat to European countries which had taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, according to Hersh, saying the refugees had “behaved well . . . and are grateful” but there is “no way of predicting how they would react to their country being abandoned.”

...

Whow.

He threatens us. As thanks for all the stuff Ukraine got.

Also, what are we supposed to do ? We're simply all out of stuff to give to him.

He's such a nice guy !



https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/2 ... ers-killed

Ukraine says Russian Black Sea Fleet commander among 34 officers killed

Hrr, hrr. While russian sources say ... it was an old and empty house that got hit.

Calling the largest refugee crisis of the 21st century "migration" is really something.

So your complaint is that I use the correct word, without any bombastics.

Besides, this is absolutely nothing. We'll see real migration waves when the climate collapse happends and countries near the equator turn simply unlivable for human beings.

[GandalfTheGrey]

Seymour Hersch lost credibility a long time ago. Last time I listened to him he assured us the US was about to invade Iran.

Meanwhile on planet earth, Ukrainians simultaneously entered both key villages Verbove and Novoprokopivka - on their way to the key logistic city of Tokmak. Once they reach there, its open season on all Russian supply routes in the south.

[QatzelOk]

Seymour Hersch lost credibility a long time ago...

Well Gandalf, what do you think of the credibility of NATO's political operatives pretending to be National Politicians?

After Seal-Clapping for a Literal Nazi, Justin Trudeau Blames 'Russian Disinformation'

During a recent visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Canada's ruling class found itself giving a standing ovation to a former nazi SS soldier. The surreal scene was supposedly the result of a lack of due diligence. Apparently, no Canadian politician was expected to know that Ukraine was allied with Adolf Hitler during World War II. ...

.

And it wasn't just Justin Hairdo giving his most Patrician golf clap. It was Canada's entire ignorant politcal class, clapping as loudly as possible for their Ukraine-War-supporting donors. And Zelensky lead the standing ovation... for an ex-Nazi.

...

Trudeau calls invite for Ukrainian who fought with Nazis 'deeply embarrassing'

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday the decision to invite a Ukrainian veteran who fought in a Nazi unit to a recent parliamentary event honouring Ukraine's president was "deeply embarrassing."

House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota is facing calls to resign from the NDP and Bloc Québécois after he extended an invitation to Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian who now lives in North Bay, Ont., to witness Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Parliament on Friday....

Trudeau found it embarassing that he was caught "knowing nothing about politics" live on camera. But even Canada's socialist party and green party were on their feet smiling and clapping.... like they were at the Oscars clapping for the great work that Hollywood does.

"I'm clapping for one of your pet causes, Mr. Donor. Can I get re-elected now?"

[GandalfTheGrey]

whatabout whatabout whatabout...

I'm done with all the whataboutism here that seems to be the only way the pro-Russian mob can prosecute their case.

Its rich, to put it mildly, to paint the west and Ukraine as nazis and nazi lovers in order to excuse Russian aggression - given how Putin literally courts nazis to secure his power base and crush dissidents - and has been doing so for years:
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/article ... -neo-nazis

I also reserve the right to condemn both sides - Russians as well as the west - for their aggression, hypocrisy and general thuggery - where and when it happens.

[skinster]

It's only a matter of time.

You also predicted Assad would fall when you were a warmonger on that war too, so let's file you under 'unreliable and full of shite'.

Excellent PR move by Zelensky:

Ha, indeed.

The U.S. has been at war with Europe too, throughout their war in Ukraine, to the point of terrorism against Germany via the Nord Stream bombings and the increase of the cost of energy bills for European citizens.

More Europeans are awakening to this, but not enough. Too many people here have been led to believe that the U.S. is our ally, even though we know that the U.S. has no friends, only interests.

Aaaand, Seymour Hersh said the same in his report today, the anniversary of the U.S. Nord Stream bombings:

A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM
The Biden administration has acknowledged neither its responsibility for the pipeline bombing nor the purpose of the sabotage

I do not know much about covert CIA operations—no outsider can—but I do understand that the essential component of all successful missions is total deniability. The American men and women who moved, under cover, in and out of Norway in the months it took to plan and carry out the destruction of three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea a year ago left no traces—not a hint of the team’s existence—other than the success of their mission.

Deniability, as an option for President Joe Biden and his foreign policy advisers, was paramount. No significant information about the mission was put on a computer, but instead typed on a Royal or perhaps a Smith Corona typewriter with a carbon copy or two, as if the Internet and the rest of the online world had yet to be invented. The White House was isolated from the goings-on near Oslo; various reports and updates from the field were directly provided to CIA Director Bill Burns, who was the only link between the planners and the president who authorized the mission to take place on September 26, 2022. Once the mission was completed, the typed papers and carbons were destroyed, thus leaving no physical trace—no evidence to be dug up later by a special prosecutor or a presidential historian. You could call it the perfect crime.

There was a flaw—a gap in understanding between those who carried out the mission and President Biden, as to why he ordered the destruction of the pipelines when he did. My initial 5,200-word report, published in early February, ended cryptically by quoting an official with knowledge of the mission telling me: “It was a beautiful cover story.” The official added: “The only flaw was the decision to do it.”

This is the first account of that flaw, on the one-year anniversary of the explosions, and it is one President Biden and his national security team will not like.

Inevitably, my initial story caused a sensation, but the major media emphasized the White House denials and relied on an old canard—my reliance on an unnamed source—to join the administration in debunking the notion that Joe Biden could have had anything to do with such an attack. I must note here that I’ve won literally scores of prizes in my career for stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker that relied on not a single named source. In the past year we’ve seen a series of contrary newspaper stories, with no named first-hand sources, claiming that a dissident Ukrainian group carried out the technical diving operation attack in the Baltic Sea via a 49-foot rented yacht called the Andromeda.

I am now able to write about the unexplained flaw cited by the unnamed official. It goes once again to the classic issue of what the Central Intelligence Agency is all about: an issue raised by Richard Helms, who headed the agency during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and the CIA’s secret spying on Americans, as ordered by President Lyndon Johnson and sustained by Richard Nixon. I published an exposé in the Times about that spying in December 1974 that led to unprecedented hearings by the Senate into the role of the agency in its unsuccessful attempts, authorized by President John F. Kennedy, to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Helms told the senators that the issue was whether he, as CIA director, worked for the Constitution or for the Crown, in the person of presidents Johnson and Nixon. The Church Committee left the issue unresolved, but Helms made it clear he and his agency worked for the top man in the White House.

Back to the Nord Stream pipelines: It is important to understand that no Russian gas was flowing to Germany through the Nord Stream pipelines when Joe Biden ordered them blown up last September 26. Nord Stream 1 had been supplying vast amounts of low-cost natural gas to Germany since 2011 and helped bolster Germany’s status as a manufacturing and industrial colossus. But it was shut down by Putin by the end of August 2022, as the Ukraine war was, at best, in a stalemate. Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021 but was blocked from delivering gas by the German government headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz two days prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Given Russia’s vast stores of natural gas and oil, American presidents since John F. Kennedy have been alert to the potential weaponization of these natural resources for political purposes. That view remains dominant among Biden and his hawkish foreign policy advisers, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland, now the acting deputy to Blinken.

Sullivan convened a series of high-level national security meetings late in 2021, as Russia was building up its forces along the border of Ukraine, with an invasion seen as almost inevitable. The group, which included representatives from the CIA, was urged to come up with a proposal for action that could serve as a deterrent to Putin. The mission to destroy the pipelines was motivated by the White House’s determination to support Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sullivan’s goal seemed clear. “The White House’s policy was to deter Russia from an attack,” the official told me. “The challenge it gave to the intelligence community was to come up with a way that was powerful enough to do that, and to make a strong statement of American capability.”

I now know what I did not know then: the real reason why the Biden administration “brought up taking out the Nord Stream pipeline.” The official recently explained to me that at the time Russia was supplying gas and oil throughout the world via more than a dozen pipelines, but Nord Stream 1 and 2 ran directly from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany. “The administration put Nord Stream on the table because it was the only one we could access and it would be totally deniable,” the official said. “We solved the problem within a few weeks—by early January—and told the White House. Our assumption was that the president would use the threat against Nord Stream as a deterrent to avoid the war.”

It was no surprise to the agency’s secret planning group when on January 27, 2022, the assured and confident Nuland, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, as he clearly was planning to, that “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The line attracted enormous attention, but the words preceding the threat did not. The official State Department transcript shows that she preceded her threat by saying that with regard to the pipeline: “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies.”

Asked by a reporter how she could say with certainty that the Germans would go along “because what the Germans have said publicly doesn’t match what you’re saying,” Nuland responded with an astonishing bit of doubletalk: “I would say go back and read the document that we signed in July [of 2021] that made very clear about the consequences for the pipeline if there is further aggression on Ukraine by Russia.” But that agreement, which was briefed to journalists, did not specify threats or consequences, according to reports in the Times, the Washington Post, and Reuters. At the time of the agreement, on July 21, 2021, Biden told the press corps that since the pipeline was 99 percent finished, “the idea that anything was going to be said or done was going to stop it was not possible.” At the time, Republicans, led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, depicted Biden’s decision to permit the Russian gas to flow as a “generational geopolitical win” for Putin and “a catastrophe” for the United States and its allies.

But two weeks after Nuland’s statement, on February 7, 2022, at a joint White House press conference with the visiting Scholz, Biden signaled that he had changed his mind and was joining Nuland and other equally hawkish foreign policy aides in talking about stopping the pipeline. “If Russia invades—that means tanks and troops crossing . . . the border of Ukraine again,” he said, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Asked how he could do so since the pipeline was under Germany’s control, he said: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

Scholz, asked the same question, said: “We are acting together. We are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps. We will do the same steps, and they will be very very hard to Russia, and they should understand.” The German leader was considered then—and now—by some members of the CIA team to be fully aware of the secret planning underway to destroy the pipelines.

By this point, the CIA team had made the necessary contacts in Norway, whose navy and special forces commands have a long history of sharing covert-operation duties with the agency. Norwegian sailors and Nasty-class patrol boats helped smuggle American sabotage operatives into North Vietnam in the early 1960s when America, in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was running an undeclared American war there. With Norway’s help, the CIA did its job and found a way to do what the Biden White House wanted done to the pipelines.

At the time, the challenge to the intelligence community was to come up with a plan that would be forceful enough to deter Putin from the attack on Ukraine. The official told me: “We did it. We found an extraordinary deterrent because of its economic impact on Russia. And Putin did it despite the threat.” It took months of research and practice in the churning waters of the Baltic Sea by the two expert US Navy deep sea divers recruited for the mission before it was deemed a go. Norway’s superb seamen found the right spot for planting the bombs that would blow up the pipelines. Senior officials in Sweden and Denmark, who still insist they had no idea what was going on in their shared territorial waters, turned a blind eye to the activities of the American and Norwegian operatives. The American team of divers and support staff on the mission’s mother ship—a Norwegian minesweeper—would be hard to hide while the divers were doing their work. The team would not learn until after the bombing that Nord Stream 2 had been shut down with 750 miles of natural gas in it.

What I did not know then, but was told recently, was that after Biden’s extraordinary public threat to blow up Nord Stream 2, with Scholz standing next to him, the CIA planning group was told by the White House that there would be no immediate attack on the two pipelines, but the group should arrange to plant the necessary bombs and be ready to trigger them “on demand”—after the war began. “It was then that we”—the small planning group that was working in Oslo with the Royal Norwegian Navy and special services on the project—“understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command.”

After Biden’s order to trigger the explosives planted on the pipelines, it took only a short flight with a Norwegian fighter and the dropping of an altered off-the-shelf sonar device at the right spot in the Baltic Sea to get it done. By then the CIA group had long disbanded. By then, too, the official told me: “We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war”—Putin was in the process of annexing the four Ukrainian oblasts he wanted—“but was part of a neocon political agenda to keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down, from getting cold feet and opening up” the shuttered Nord Stream 2. “The White House fear was that Putin would get Germany under his thumb and then he was going to get Poland.”

The White House said nothing as the world wondered who committed the sabotage. “So the president struck a blow against the economy of Germany and Western Europe,” the official told me. “He could have done it in June and told Putin: We told you what we would do.” The White House’s silence and denials were, he said, “a betrayal of what we were doing. If you are going to do it, do it when it would have made a difference.”

The leadership of the CIA team viewed Biden’s misleading guidance for its order to destroy the pipelines, the official told me, “as taking a strategic step toward World War III. What if Russia had responded by saying: You blew up our pipelines and I’m going to blow up your pipelines and your communication cables. Nord Stream was not a strategic issue for Putin—it was an economic issue. He wanted to sell gas. He’d already lost his pipelines” when the Nord Stream I and 2 were shut down before the Ukraine war began.

Within days of the bombing, officials in Denmark and Sweden announced they would conduct an investigation. They reported two months later that there had indeed been an explosion and said there would be further inquiries. None has emerged. The German government conducted an inquiry but announced that major parts of its findings would be classified. Last winter German authorities allocated $286 billion in subsidies to major corporations and homeowners who faced higher energy bills to run their business and warm their homes. The impact is still being felt today, with a colder winter expected in Europe.

President Biden waited four days before calling the pipeline bombing “a deliberate act of sabotage.” He said: “now the Russians are pumping out disinformation about it.” Sullivan, who chaired the meetings that led to the proposal to covertly destroy the pipelines, was asked at a later press conference whether the Biden administration “now believes that Russia was likely responsible for the act of sabotage?”

Sullivan’s answer, undoubtedly practiced, was: “Well, first, Russia has done what it frequently does when it is responsible for something, which is make accusations that it was really someone else who did it. We’ve seen this repeatedly over time.

“But the president was also clear today that there is more work to do on the investigation before the United States government is prepared to make an attribution in this case.” He continued: “We will continue to work with our allies and partners to gather all of the facts, and then we will make a determination about where we go from there.”

I could find no instances when Sullivan was subsequently asked by someone in the American press about the results of his “determination.” Nor could I find any evidence that Sullivan, or the president, has been queried since then about the results of the “determination” about where to go.

There is also no evidence that President Biden has required the American intelligence community to conduct a major all-source inquiry into the pipeline bombing. Such requests are known as “Taskings” and are taken seriously inside the government.

All of this explains why a routine question I posed a month or so after the bombings to someone with many years in the American intelligence community led me to a truth that no one in America or Germany seems to want to pursue. My question was simple: “Who did it?”

The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/a-y ... ord-stream