As expected, the first interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin by a journalist from the Western world after the Russia-Ukraine war started is bringing to the fore some very uncomfortable questions about the USA and NATO nations. The Russian President has held the USA and its spy agency CIA directly responsible for the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
During the interview, Tucker Carlson asked Putin, ‘Who blew up the Nordstream pipeline”? Putin first answers jokingly, “You did it for sure”. When Tucker laughs saying he was busy that day, Putin says, “You personally may have an alibi, but the CIA has no such alibi.”
When Tucker Carlson asks if he has evidence that the CIA did it, Putin explains, “As the saying goes, ‘look for someone who is interested’, but here in this case (the USA government) was not just interested but they also have the capabilities. Not everyone has the capability to dive into the bottom of the Baltic Sea and carry out an explosion like this.”
Tucker Carlson then asks, “The blowing up of the Nordstream pipeline is the largest act of Industrial terrorism ever. If you have evidence, given the security services at your disposal, why not present it to the world and win a propaganda victory?
Putin then answers, “In the world of propaganda, it is very difficult to defeat the USA. The USA controls the world’s media and even the European media. The ultimate beneficiaries of the biggest European media networks are US financial institutions, don’t you know that? So it is very cost-prohibitive for us to get involved in the media propaganda world, even though it can be possible. We can simply shine the spotlight on the sources of our information and we will not achieve results. It is clear to the whole world what happened in the Nordstream blast. Even American analysts say it directly.”
When Tucker Carlson asks, “But the Germans clearly know, that their NATO partner (USA) did this. it has damaged their economy greatly, they may not ever recover from it. But why don’t the Germans say something about it?”
Putin then explains that it confuses him too, but today’s German stand appears to be guided by the interests of the larger collective West. It is difficult to explain the logic of their action or rather inaction to the incident of the Nordstream pipeline, he adds.
As per research reports, the Nordstream pipeline damage in September 2022 has released over 478,000 tonnes of methane gas into the atmosphere, and the methane gas leaked from the damaged threads is matched with CO2 equivalent emitted by concrete enough to build 27 Burj Khalifa buildings. The Nordstream pipeline damage is the single largest emission of methane gas in recent memory.
What happened to the Nordstream pipeline?
The Nordstream pipeline, a critical energy supply source for Europe, was built to bypass Ukraine and supply energy from Russia directly to Europe. A large section of it traverses under the Baltic Sea. In September 2022, blasts were noticed off the Bornholm island off the coast of Sweden, and both the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 pipelines were blown up.
Pulitzer-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, in an explosive story, revealed that the explosives to blow up the pipelines were planted by an elite team of military personnel during the NATO exercise BALTOPS in June 2022. Hersh had further added that the Norwegian authorities had cooperated with the USA Navy for the operation and a surveillance aircraft of the Norway Navy had dropped a sonar buoy that used a signal to trigger the C4 explosives attached to the pipelines months ago by the US Navy divers team.
Curiously, the collective surveillance and spy network of the NATO and Western world that keeps a watch over the whole world hasn’t been able to provide an answer as to who destroyed a crucial pipeline that provided Europe with much-needed energy.
Old videos of US President Biden and key US officials declaring that they will never allow the Nordstream pipeline to be functional and will destroy it if needed, were mostly ignored by the Western media.
Recently, Sweden, in whose territorial waters the explosions happened, stated that it has no clue who blew up the pipelines.
It is notable here that after the pipelines were blown up, the USA emerged as the key energy supplier to Europe. Since the functional pipelines supplying energy were in Russia’s economic and strategic interest, as the Russian economy largely depends on sales of energy, initial allegations of Russia’s involvement in the blasts, fanned by US media and social media voices, were soon dismissed.
The explosions were reported on September 26, 2022. both lines of Nordstream 1 and one line of Nordstream 2, a multimillion-dollar major energy project crucial for Europe to purchase natural gas from Russian company Gazprom, were damaged in what is known as the largest act of Industrial terrorism so far.
Tucker Carlson’s full interview with Vladimir Putin can be watched here.