Treating the Nord Stream explosions like a detective novel is irrelevant and part of Russia’s plan to distract and divide

Since saboteurs planted explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which cross the Baltic Sea to connect Russia to Germany, two years ago, suspicion has fallen on a succession of potential culprits.

Immediately after the explosion on September 26, 2022, many Western experts blamed Russia for the attack. They said Moscow blew up the pipelines as part of its “hybrid warfare” strategy – demonstrating its willingness and ability to attack critical infrastructure – or as part of a “false flag” operation aimed at smearing Ukraine.

Since then, journalists and pundits have put forward a series of culprits, including President Joe Biden and the CIA, Ukraine and Poland.

Investigations by Swedish and Danish intelligence services ended in February 2024 without identifying the saboteurs, which did little to silence conspiracy theories.

Then, in August 2024, German media reported that as part of the ongoing German investigation, prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor living in Poland.

kyiv dismissed the accusation of official complicity as “absolute nonsense”; Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and minister of digital affairs, suggested that the German findings were “inspired by Moscow” and intended to cause a rift between NATO countries.

Nevertheless, it helped change the consensus framing of the incident, which views the explosion as an international crime against civilian infrastructure majority-owned by Russia.

And this represents a clear victory for Russia. Moscow’s desire has always been to consolidate its narrative, rather than to establish the truth.

As investigators seek to determine the motives, means, and circumstances of the sabotage itself, observers of post-Soviet geopolitics and President Vladimir Putin’s tactics, such as myself, can also examine Russia’s motivations for portraying the attack as a deliberate criminal act. And here, the Nord Stream affair serves as a reminder of how effectively the Kremlin uses disinformation and manipulation to make its case, often to sow dissent in the West and distract from Russia’s real crimes elsewhere.

This is true even when, as appears to be the case now with the Nord Stream explosions, the forensic evidence gathered so far fits Russia’s preferred narrative.

Nord Stream in context

The Nord Stream explosions came seven months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By then, the Kremlin’s military offensive had stalled and Putin was shifting his focus to a protracted war of attrition. His military had already inflicted nearly 15,000 civilian casualties, and September 2022 saw the start of sustained attacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, including dams, railways, hospitals, schools, and the energy grid.

Nord Stream 2 gas leak.
Danish Defence Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Built and operated by a consortium led by the state-owned Gazprom, the Nord Stream pipelines have strengthened Russia’s ability to weaponize energy by exerting control over natural gas prices and flows. For this reason, Putin’s opponents, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, viewed Nord Stream 2 as a dangerous geopolitical weapon when it was built in 2021. The completion of Nord Stream 2 means that the delivery of Russian gas to Europe—much of which relies on Russia for its natural gas needs—could largely bypass Ukraine and end the need to pay transit fees to both Ukraine and Poland.

Ukraine therefore had a clear interest in stopping the flow of gas through the Nord Stream pipelines. So did Russia’s competitors in the European energy market, notably Norway and the United States. The same was probably true of the German political parties that advocated an energy transition to sustainable and renewable sources.

Although completed, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was not in service when Russia launched its full-scale invasion because it had been blocked by German energy regulators. And the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which began operating in 2012, was shut down indefinitely by Russia in August 2022.

More than a mystery

It was therefore not so surprising for Western analysts to accuse Russia of destroying its own, now useless, pipeline to signal its willingness and ability to attack undersea infrastructure.

But over time, that view was supplanted by stories that treated the sabotage as a genuine mystery, with an emphasis on uncovering motives and means. Investigative journalists and other analysts pored over statements in public records, leaks from alleged whistleblowers, geospatial data, financial records and even reconstructions of the attack to try to crack the case.

Some, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, have blamed the CIA and the Oval Office for the affair.

Unable to corroborate Hersh’s story, most American media outlets chose not to report his claims, and the White House consistently denied them.

Feeding conspiracy theories

Hersh believes in particular that powerful Western interests put pressure on investigators and leaked information to the media to cover up the truth.

This second-order hypothesis – that the original crime was aggravated by a cover-up – has long been fueled by Russia. After Sweden and Denmark suspended their investigations, Moscow’s representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya, called on the UN to resume the investigation, saying: “It’s as if a crime had been committed – a murder – and a year later the investigating authorities concluded that the victim had been murdered.”

Russian disinformation

Russia has since accused German prosecutors of preparing to close the investigation without identifying those responsible.

The appeal of this interpretation for Moscow is obvious. First, it fits Putin’s argument that NATO is constantly plotting against Russia. Second, it offers the promise that Russia will recoup the cost of the Nord Stream sabotage from insurance companies. So far, insurers have refused to pay, citing official findings that the sabotage was “an act of war.”

Mapping the Nord Stream explosion investigation.
Stefan Sauer/photo alliance via Getty Images

Moscow, in its relentless quest for evidence of NATO and US complicity, is unlikely to be satisfied with the single arrest warrant issued by the German investigation. Russia also wants to put the US in the dock – after all, President Joe Biden has indeed threatened NATO with shutting down Nord Stream in early 2022. And Moscow responded to the German arrest warrant for a Ukrainian by doubling down on its accusation that the US ordered the attack.

Russia could rely here on the words of prominent American figures, such as Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who repeated disinformation from established Russian propaganda outlets, and former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who praised the quality of life in Moscow in a much-criticized interview with Putin.

After the Nord Stream explosions, both Greene and Carlson were quick to assert that Russia was not responsible and, by implication, that the United States may have played a role.

Truth is not the goal

Maintaining the “mystery” of Nord Stream distracts from Russia’s documented crimes in Ukraine, including attacks on civilian infrastructure and, according to the UN Human Rights Council, “disregard for fundamental principles of humanitarian law and its human rights obligations.”

Since the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion, Russia has relied on its vast disinformation and propaganda capabilities to advance its narrative. In this, Russia has proven itself.

In January 2022, US government sources reported that Russia was staging attacks on pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine and pinning the blame on Kiev to justify the invasion. Similarly, analysts cited the alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow in May 2023 as an example of Soviet-style “false flag” operations. It was this record that prompted German security personnel to suspect that, in the case of Nord Stream, the trail to Ukraine had been fabricated by Russian agents.

Speculation is seductive, and the Nord Stream affair has generated its share of speculation over the past two years, during which time Russia has waged a vast campaign of deliberate lies and disinformation. During that same period, Putin has consistently violated international law.

The Russian narrative on Nord Stream may well, once all the investigations are completed, be the dominant narrative. But what is clear is that Putin’s accusations against Ukraine and the United States are not motivated by a commitment to justice, but by a desire to disrupt and distract. The truth is not his goal, but a target.

Keith Brown is director of the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Arizona State University, which receives support from the U.S. Department of State to train American graduate students in languages ​​less commonly taught in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.