The US needed to leverage a possible assault on the pipelines to discourage Moscow from an offensive in opposition to Ukraine, the journalist has claimed
The US supposed to make use of the specter of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines to dissuade Russia from attacking Ukraine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has argued.
In an exposé revealed on-line in February, Hersh claimed that the US orchestrated the September 2022 bombing of the Baltic Sea pipelines constructed to ship fuel from Russia to Germany.
Talking to German on-line journal Tichys Einblick on Monday, the journalist mentioned President Joe Biden initially considered the specter of sabotage as a deterrent.
Hersh claimed that plans for a possible assault started in direction of the top of 2021, when the US was accusing Moscow of a navy buildup alongside the border with Ukraine.
“The thought was to seek out one thing extraordinary that the president may use, like an enticement or a risk, to persuade Putin to not assault [Ukraine],” Hersh mentioned.
“Above all, it was a risk. I don’t suppose this administration is superb at persuasion. They function extra alongside the traces of, ‘You’re with us otherwise you’re in opposition to us,’” the journalist added. “The thought was to inform Putin: ‘We are going to blow up the pipelines when you cross the Ukrainian border.’”
Two weeks earlier than Moscow launched its navy operation in February 2022, Biden promised that the US would “deliver an finish” to Nord Stream if Russian forces entered Ukraine. Washington and its allies have since imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow and have provided Kiev with heavy weapons, together with tanks and artillery.
Nevertheless, the White Home has denied any involvement within the pipeline sabotage, dismissing Hersh’s story as “totally false and full fiction.”
A number of information shops claimed in March {that a} pro-Ukrainian group appearing independently might have been behind the sabotage. Kiev has denied any involvement within the assault. Russia, in the meantime, insisted that the stories had been geared toward deflecting consideration from Hersh’s investigation.
Final month, the UN Safety Council rejected Russia’s name to arrange a global fee to analyze the sabotage.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN, informed the Izvestia newspaper on Tuesday that “Western international locations, particularly the US, should not enthusiastic about an goal worldwide investigation.” As a substitute, they’re “enthusiastic about masking the tracks and main investigators down the fallacious path,” he insisted.
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