Seymour Hersh: Biden blew up Russia's Nord Stream pipelines to punish Germany
WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden last year planned to blow up Russia's Nord Stream pipelines to punish Germany for refusing to ship arms to Ukraine in the middle of the war, a top American investigative journalist has said .
In an interview with China Daily published on Friday, US Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh said Biden may have decided to blow up the pipelines to punish German Chancellor Olaf Sholz for his unwillingness to leave Kiev with to supply deadly weapons and tanks.
“The president then decided at the end of September to detonate the mines. The war in Ukraine did not go well. The American war that President Biden wanted so badly to support was not going well in late fall, a stalemate at best, two sides just stood there,” he said.
"The only thing I can link, think and guess, and those involved thought the same, is that the President was afraid that Chancellor Scholz did not want to invest even more weapons and armaments. That's all. I don't know if it was anger or punishment," Hersh said.
The investigative journalist called the decision "stupid" and said Biden will face a lot of criticism over the blasts as they hit Europe's energy supply and will make life harder for Europeans next fall and winter.
“I'm very used to my government's commitments. They can always do very stupid things," said the renowned reporter, known for his coverage of US crimes during the Vietnam and Middle East wars.
Last month, Hersh wrote an article blaming the US and Norway for the series of explosions that shut down both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 -- the pipelines under the Baltic Sea that were being built to bring Russian natural gas to western Europe.
According to his story, the bombs were planted in June during the BALTOPS 2022 naval exercise in the Baltic Sea and went off at the end of September.
The White House has dismissed Hersh's report as "absolutely false and complete fiction."
But Russia has officially accused the US of being behind the blasts and has called for an independent UN investigation into what it described as an act of international terrorism.
Earlier this month, a New York Times report, citing American officials, said a certain pro-Ukrainian group may be behind the attack on the Nord Stream, possibly acting without the knowledge of the Ukrainian government.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the comments "complete nonsense and said that such an explosion of such size and depth can only be carried out by specialists.
