About three weeks before Russian tanks began to move into Ukraine last year, President Joe Biden held a news conference in Washington with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said—in no uncertain terms—that the first casualty of the war would be the Nord Stream pipeline. 

“If Russia invades…again, then there will be no Nord Stream 2,” he said. “We will bring an end to it.”

Biden was asked to clarify the remark and responded, “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”

His remark appeared to be an administration-wide talking point at the time. 

A month earlier, Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state, also mentioned Nord Stream’s fate if Russia was to attack.

“We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies and I want to be clear with you today,” she said. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote an in-depth account of how the Biden administration orchestrated the pipeline attack. (See “RUSSIA ACCUSES DENMARK OF NORD STREAM SABOTAGE COVER-UP” 21 Mar 2023, “RUSSIA SAYS LATEST NORD STREAM REPORT LOOKS LIKE A ‘COORDINATED HOAX’” 14 Mar 2023, and “U.S. BLEW UP RUSSIA’S NORD STREAM REPORT: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES” 14 Feb 2023.)

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, told reporters yesterday that the Hersh report shows the need for an open and transparent investigation into the culprits “into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”

“It’s impossible to leave this without finding the perpetrators and punishing them,” he said. 

The U.S. has completely denied the Hersh report, but Biden is not the only person in Washington who showed their cards. 

Nuland addressed a Senate hearing in February and told Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “Senator Cruz, like you, 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.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s reaction to the bombing also raised eyebrows. He said, “Ultimately this 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.”

Radosław Tomasz “Radek” Sikorski, the European Parliament member and former Polish foreign minister who is married to Russia hawk Anne Applebaum, tweeted a photo of the scene, “Thank you, USA.”

(That tweet was later deleted.)

TRENDPOST: Can you imagine for a moment if Russian President Vladimir Putin made a threat against a key piece of infrastructure that ended up being attacked and destroyed? The cable news outlets would be covering the incident 24 hours a day.

There seems to be almost a fear in the media to even mention Nord Stream, which has evolved into something of a journalistic third wheel. 

The U.S. is banking on the hope that the world will never know who carried out the attacks because the bombings would be considered a war crime by the U.S. against NATO ally Germany. 

Europe seems to have little interest in finding out the parties behind the attack. 

Christoph Heusgen, the German diplomat, was interviewed in November and said it will be almost impossible to prove. He also noted that even if a particular explosive was found, there’s a chance the guilty country intentionally used the device to cover its tracks. He said in the long run, it will likely not make any difference who was behind the attack.