This past Tuesday, one lead Polish official went off on another polish member of the European parliament for attempting to suggest that the United States was the one behind the damage done to a pair of Russian gas pipelines connected to Germany this past week.
As a member of European Parliament and chairman of the Delegation for relations with the United States, Radoslaw Sikorski exclaimed via social media, “Thank you, USA,” overtop an image that showed a stream of methane surging to the surface of the water from one of the spots where the pipeline had been damaged.
“By the way, there’s no shortage of pipeline capacity for taking gas from Russia to Western Europe, including Germany,” claimed Sikorski via social media. “Nordstream’s only logic was for Putin to be able to blackmail or wage war on Eastern Europe with impunity.”
“All Ukrainian and Baltic sea states have opposed Nordstream’s construction for 20 years,” he went on. “Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine. Someone, @MFA_Russia , did a special maintenance operation.”
Russia was quick to take advantage of the comments from Sikorkski, who is currently married to Anne Applebaum, a left-leaning American writer, asking via social media if his comment was “an official statement on this being a terrorist attack.”
💬 Russian MFA Spokeswoman Maria #Zakharova: ex Polish FM, now European MP @radeksikorski has thanked the US for today's incident at the Russian gas pipeline (Nord Stream 2).
Is it an official statement on this being a terrorist attack? https://t.co/QnGc10kNCq
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) September 27, 2022
The statements from Sikorksi were rapidly condemned by Poland’s secretary of state and former director of the Department of National Security, Stanislaw Zaryn.
“Russian #propaganda instantly launched a smear campaign against Poland, the US and Ukraine, accusing the West of aggression against #NS1 and #NS2,” expressed a tweet from Zaryn. “Authenticating the Russian lies at this particular moment jeopardizes the security of Poland. What an act of gross irresponsibility!”
Russian #propaganda instantly launched a smear campaign against Poland, the US and Ukraine, accusing the West of aggression against #NS1 and #NS2.
Authenticating the Russian lies at this particular moment jeopardizes the security of Poland.
What an act of gross irresponsibility! pic.twitter.com/S9YJKRCv9B— Stanisław Żaryn (@StZaryn) September 27, 2022
The company in charge of running and maintaining the pipelines, Nord Stream AG, released a statement about the incident, calling it “unprecedented.”
“The destruction that occurred on the same day simultaneously on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system is unprecedented,” expressed the company in a released statement. “It is not yet possible to estimate the timing of the restoration of the gas transport infrastructure.”
A recent report out of Spiegel, a German news source, claimed that the CIA had warned Germany of possible attacks against the Baltic Sea gas pipelines weeks ago. Berlin is currently assuming that it was a targeted attack against the Nord Stream system, explained an unnamed source.
As the largest economy on the continent, Germany heavily relied on natural gas from Russia for over 55% of its imports prior to the invasion of Ukraine taking place.
