Nord Stream sabotage yacht had traces of explosives, NYT reports

German investigators have found traces of explosives on the Andromeda yacht linked to the Nord Stream sabotage that occurred last September, The New York Times reported.

The information comes from three unnamed German officials, the US outlet said in a report on Friday.

The same sources claimed that two of the six crew members of the “pleasure” boat had used false Bulgarian passports during the alleged operation against the gas pipelines.

In early March, The Times reported, citing US officials, that a “pro-Ukrainian group” could have been behind the attack that disabled the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which were built to deliver Russian gas to Europe via Germany. The newspaper’s unnamed sources pointed out that “no US or UK nationals were involved” in the sabotage of key energy infrastructure.

The vessel, which was allegedly hired by the perpetrators to carry out the attack, was quickly identified as the yacht Andromeda. The boat now sits in dry dock overlooking the Baltic Sea in northeastern Germany, with “his entrails torn out by the investigators”, said the NYT.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov earlier suggested that the stories about Andromeda’s involvement had been aired by Western media to distract from veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report, which came shortly before Western media reports and blamed Washington for the sabotage. .

According to an informed source who spoke to Hersh, explosives were planted on Baltic Sea pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers during a NATO exercise, and detonated remotely two months later on the orders of US leader Joe Biden. The White House dismissed as “totally false and complete fiction” the findings of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

In its Friday report, the NYT also cited Johannes Riber, a naval officer and analyst at the Danish Institute for Strategic and War Studies, who also questioned claims that a 50-foot (15-meter) yacht ) would be able to carry out an attack of such a scale, likening them to a “James Bond” theory.

Andromeda could well have been a decoy or part of a larger mission, Riber suggested. But planting high explosives on the pipelines would likely have required an underwater drone or mini-submarine, and a professional vessel to transport it, he pointed out.

However, the article also contained comments from an anonymous pipeline expert and a commercial diver, who both claimed that small bombs could have been enough to cripple infrastructure if placed near a joint. of the pipeline.

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