![]() ![]() ![]() But we have not been able to determine who was behind it.” It was right to wait until national investigations were completed before saying anything more about who was responsible, he said. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said it was known there had been “an attack against the pipelines, an act of sabotage. ![]() “But this is not our activity.” Reznikov said Kyiv was not worried about the prospect of the media reports weakening western support for Ukraine’s war effort. “It’s like a compliment for our special forces,” he joked. Speaking at the same Stockholm conference, Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, insisted Kyiv was not involved, adding that the media reports were a “little bit strange” and had “nothing to do” with the Ukrainian government. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, on a state visit to Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, also warned against leaping to judgment, saying officials must be allowed to investigate “in peace, so the government can reach a verdict on the basis of their work, rather than prematurely drawing conclusions from media reports”. “But I am warning against jumping to conclusions,” Pistorius told a meeting of defence ministers in Stockholm, adding that the likelihood was “equally high” that the bombing of the pipelines, which carry gas from Russia to Germany across the Baltic, could have been a “false-flag operation to blame Ukraine”. “We have to make a clear distinction whether it was a Ukrainian group, happened on Ukrainian orders, or was a pro-Ukrainian group acting without knowledge of the government,” he said. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, urged caution. Investigators are still trying to determine the identity of the saboteurs and their motive, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that no firm conclusions could yet be drawn, in particular on whether the explosions had been ordered by a state. The German public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday a boat had been searched between 18 and 20 January over “suspicions it could have been used to transport explosive devices that exploded on 26 September 2022” at the Nord Stream pipelines. The report, while not suggesting Ukrainian state involvement, comes as Kyiv urges its western allies urgently to increase arms and ammunition supplies to drive back Russian forces as the war enters its second year. ![]()
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