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S/PV.9266 Security Council
Security Council Report, Dated 21st February 2023.
Threats to international peace and security
Mr. Sachs: The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to the peace.
The consequences of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines are enormous. They include not only the vast economic losses related to the pipelines themselves and their future potential use, but also the heightened threat to transboundary infrastructure of all kinds: submarine Internet cables, international pipelines for gas and hydrogen, transboundary power transmission, offshore wind farms and more. The global transformation to green energy will require considerable transboundary infrastructure, including in international waters. Countries need to have full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties. Some European countries recently expressed concern over the safety of their offshore infrastructure.
The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines required a very high degree of planning, expertise and technological capacity. The Nord Stream 2 pipelines are a marvel of engineering. Each section of pipe is made of rolled steel of 4.5-centimetre thickness, and with a pipeline internal diameter of 1.15 metres. The pipe is encased in concrete of 10.9-centimetre thickness. The weight of each section of concrete-encased pipe is 24 metric tons. The Nord Stream 2 pipelines, some 1,200 kilometres in length, contain around 200,000 pipes. The pipelines sit on the sea floor.
Destroying a pipeline of heavy rolled steel, encased in concrete, at depths of 70 to 90 metres, requires highly advanced technology for the transportation of the explosives, diving to install the explosives and detonation. To do so undetected, in the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden, adds greatly to the complexity of the operation. As a number of senior officials have publicly confirmed, an action of this sort must have been carried out by a State-level actor. Only a handful of State-level actors have both the technical capacity and access to the Baltic Sea to have carried out this action. Those include the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, either individually or in some combination. Ukraine lacks the necessary technologies, as well as access to the Baltic Sea.
A recent report by The Washington Post revealed that the intelligence agencies of the NATO countries have privately concluded that there is no evidence whatsoever that Russia carried out this action. That also comports with the fact that Russia had no obvious motive to carry out this act of terrorism on its own critical infrastructure. Indeed, Russia is likely to bear considerable expenses to repair the pipelines. Three countries have reportedly carried out investigations of the Nord Stream terrorism, namely, Denmark, Germany and Sweden. Those countries presumably know much about the circumstances of the terrorist attack. Sweden in particular has perhaps the most to tell the world about the crime scene, which its divers investigated. Yet instead of sharing that information globally, Sweden has kept the results of its investigation secret from the rest of the world. Sweden has refused to share its findings with Russia and has turned down a joint investigation with Denmark and Germany.
There is only one detailed account to date of the Nord Stream destruction, the one recently put forward by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, ostensibly based on information leaked to Hersh by an unnamed source. Hersh attributes the Nord Stream destruction to a decision ordered by United States President Joe Biden and carried out by United States agents in a covert operation that Hersh describes in detail. The White House has described Hersh's account as "completely and utterly false," but did not offer any information contradicting Hersh's account and did not offer any alternative explanation. Senior United States officials made statements before and after the Nord Stream destruction that showed the United States animus towards the pipelines. On 27 January 2022, Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tweeted, "If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward." On 7 February, President Biden said, "If Russia invades ... again, then there will be no longer Nord Stream 2; we will bring an end to it." When asked by the reporter how he would do that, he responded, "I promise you we will be able to do it."
On 30 September 2022, immediately following the terrorist attack on the pipeline, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the destruction of the pipeline is "also a tremendous opportunity; it's a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs." On 28 January 2023, Under-Secretary Nuland declared, in testimony to Senator Ted Cruz in the United States Senate, "I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea."
Such language is not at all appropriate in the face of international terrorism.
The truth is not yet known by the world, but it is knowable.
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