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According to the New York Times, German investigators detected indications of explosives aboard the Andromeda boat related to the Nord Stream sabotage last September.
According to a Friday report in the newspaper, the information came from three anonymous German authorities.
According to the same sources, two of the six crew members on the “pleasure” boat used forged Bulgarian passports during the suspected operation against the gas pipes.
The New York Times claimed in early March, citing US sources, that a “pro-Ukrainian group” may have been behind the attack that shut down the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which were built to transport Russian gas to Europe via Germany. According to unidentified sources, “no American or British nationals were involved” in the sabotage of critical energy infrastructure.
The yacht Andromeda, which the culprits allegedly chartered to carry out the attack, was quickly identified. The boat is now in dry dock in northern Germany, facing the Baltic Sea, with “its innards pulled out by investigators,” according to the New York Times.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, previously suggested that the Western media disseminated the articles about Andromeda’s involvement to divert attention away from the report by veteran American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, which came shortly before the Western media reports and blamed Washington for the sabotage.
According to an informed source who spoke with Hersh, US Navy divers put explosives on the pipes in the Baltic Sea during a NATO drill in June 2022, and they were detonated remotely two months later on the command of American President Joe Biden. The White House has dismissed the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s findings as “utterly false and complete fiction.”
The New York Times reported on Friday that Johannes Riber, a navy officer and analyst at Denmark’s Institute for Strategy and War Studies, questioned assertions that a 50-foot (15-meter) yacht could carry out such a large-scale attack, comparing them to a “James Bond” notion.
Riber speculated that Andromeda could have been a ruse or part of a larger plan. However, he pointed out that installing heavy explosives near the pipelines would have required an undersea drone or a mini-submarine, as well as a professional ship to convey it.