Duda denies that sabotage of Nord Stream gas pipeline was supported by Poland

September 2 () –

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Sunday denied accusations levelled against him by former German intelligence chief August Hanning, who accused the Polish leader of supporting his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, an incident whose circumstances and perpetrators remain unclear almost two years later.

Duda described these remarks as “politically absurd” and as a move made “jointly with the Russians,” he said in an interview with Polish television channel Republika.

“This is the only way to see it, if such accusations are made against an allied country. I find this behaviour astonishing. It is no secret that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines served Russian-German interests. Let no one say that this was about energy security for Europe – on the contrary, it was a danger. Anyone who knows the gas energy market knows this very well,” he added.

In this regard, he explained that Germany was “rubbing its hands with joy” because it would have “its hands on the tap and would have supplies at good prices”, after which he stressed that it was a project between Berlin and Moscow, which he accused of being a “conglomerate of common interests”.

“I recall with regret my discussions with former Chancellor Angela Merkel about stopping investment in Nord Stream 2. I repeatedly asked and heard in response that it was a business project and that she had no influence on it,” he added.

The Nord Stream pipelines, which are key to Russian gas supplies to Europe, were the target of several explosions at the end of September 2022, in a context marked by the war in Ukraine. The sabotage, which Moscow has always distanced itself from, caused several explosions.

In mid-August, the German public prosecutor’s office asked Poland to arrest a Ukrainian suspected of involvement in the sabotage of the gas pipelines. In addition, a journalistic investigation published by German public television ARD and the newspapers ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and ‘Die Zeit’ names two other people from Ukraine as suspects. The authorities suspect that divers may have placed the explosive devices in the pipelines.

Until now, the investigation has focused on a sailboat where traces of explosives were discovered in July 2023 and which could have been used to transport the material. There were allegedly five men and a woman on board, a group that had rented the boat using false documentation.