Footage published by several European news agencies shows how one of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines was completely severed by the explosion – damage that is believed to have been caused by a small and well-placed explosive device.
The filming was done with an underwater drone by the Norwegian company Blueye and was published in several media on Wednesday. The footage shows the gas pipeline being split in two, with only a small amount of cracked metal indicating that an explosion has taken place.
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Previously, footage from Nord Stream 1 has shown much more extensive damage, with at least 50 meters of the gas pipeline torn apart and a large gash formed on the seabed. In the case of Nord Stream 1, both gas pipelines were destroyed while only one of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines was sabotaged.
– It clearly looks like a shaped charge to me. Huge forces were at work that were very focused. It was a small explosive device, comments former Danish military officer Niels Kamp on German RTL. A retired French military diver adds that the explosive charge probably weighed only a few kilograms.
RTL further notes that the use of a smaller explosive device means that the terrorist attack could also have been carried out by a smaller command unit.
The gas pipelines were destroyed on September 26 last year off the Danish island of Bornholm, cutting off Russian natural gas supplies to Europe and making it impossible for EU countries to resume supplies, even if sanctions against Russia were lifted.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has previously reported that the U.S. and Norway were most likely behind the terrorist attacks.
More recently, however, several major international media outlets have reported that a team of Ukrainian specialists hired a boat to transport and place the explosives – a version that Hersh completely dismisses as deliberate disinformation from US and German intelligence.
