Talk:2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 3 August 2023

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On 8 February 2023, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on his Substack page in which he alleged that the attack was ordered by the White House and carried out utilizing American and Norwegian assets.

To

On 8 February 2023, American Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on his Substack page in which he alleged that the attack was ordered by the White House and carried out utilizing American and Norwegian assets.

49.182.83.144 (talk) 14:32, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: Is this really necessary? The Pulitzer Prize is mentioned in the second sentence of his article, if anyone wants to know more. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 15:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Investigations: Separate section Reactions in addition to subsection Speculation

As noted by HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith the Investigations subsection Speculation contains information that has no bearing on the investigations of the sabotage, trying to address this caused a revert by Mhorg. I think it would be helpful to not actually include in the Investigations section statements from people that have no actual involvement in the investigation and who are therefore merely reacting to the events. Since some of the reactions are covered by WP:RS and come from notable individuals, then I think this information should not simply be removed, but rather moved to a separate section 'Reactions' - placed in the article on the same level as the 'Investigations'. How about that? Lklundin (talk) 20:23, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

This could be an interesting solution. The problem is that these reactions would then have to be separated for the different trails that the investigators are following. Isn't that a bit confusing? Mhorg (talk) 20:31, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd agree. The whole "Involvement of the United States" section is full of random statements by individuals with zero evidence and varying levels of reliability. Sergey Lavrov is another person who really should not be put on the same level of prominence as the legitimately compelling evidence and perspectives that either Ukraine or Russia did it. The only semi-credible person in the section is Seymour Hersh, who himself has become increasingly discredited for his use of unverifiable anonymous sources with wild tales that get disproven by OSINT weeks later. HappyWith (talk) 20:34, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, good.

I hope general agreement can be found regarding what it then means to 'have no actual involvement in the investigation'. The investigation of Seymour Hersh relies on a single anonymous source, but plenty of WP:RS take his word for having such a source. So I would expect the info related to him to remain where it is. On the other hand, former POTUS Donald Trump who no longer has access to classified information does not seem to be taken seriously for having an informed opinion on the sabotage, so I would expect the information regarding him to move to the Reactions section. Statements from people like Radek Sikorski and Mykhailo Podolyak appear to be formed entirely on already publicly available information, so should go to the Reactions section.

Secondly, a bit of thought should go into how the Reactions section is best structured, with several types of individuals and kinds of organisations of varying importance reacting from all over the World. Considering the current mix, I think anyone's WP:BOLD's approach is likely to be an improvement. Having looked around, it seems the Reactions section should be placed before sections on Cause and Aftermath. Lklundin (talk) 21:10, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Looking a bit more, I found also articles like Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 where a Reactions section comes more towards its end. Since for this article the Reactions seem less important than the Investigations, I have gone ahead and started a Reactions section (with country subsections) towards the end of the article. Let's see how that works. Lklundin (talk) 22:28, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort to improve the article but I think that now it's not clear what goes to Causes#Speculation and what goes to Reactions. Sikorski, Trump or August Hanning definitely react to the sabotage, but they are also speculating about its cause. My concern is that without a clear scope of each section editors will just add stuff randomly and lead to general chaos. Alaexis_¿question? 06:08, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Good point. Is it possible that it is not helpful to have a section 'Speculation' under Causes? Maybe the information under Causes should be based on supporting evidence or otherwise discovered information that actually contribute to determining the causes, whereas as other statements could go under Reactions? At any rate, clearly separating the two may not be possible, but I think not trying to will surely obscure the actual information regarding the causes. Lklundin (talk) 06:27, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

• As currently written, the section "Speculation" (Speculations?) includes some factual materials, some well-sources "theories" to explain facts (some of them are probably conspiracy theories) and bare accusations, not supported by anything. The bare unsupported accusations might be included to a section "Reactions", but they should not be included as Investigations and even Speculations. My very best wishes (talk) 21:11, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Country-specific subsections create confusion, repeated information

Looking further at the large section 'Cause' I notice that the country-specific subsections make the article difficult for editors to maintain and consequently difficult for everyone to read. All countries (and non-national entities like NGOs and the media) contributing to the investigation are pursuing the same goal, so it it unclear to me how it helps to split the investigation into national subsections (that don't clearly divide the activity). What actually happens during editing is that the exact same source for pretty much the same information is inserted more than once into the article, and the unclear division into subsections is contributing to this. This is especially clear with respect to the investigation (from now many parties) regarding the actual ruptures of the pipes. It matters less if it is a German or Swedish operated underwater drone that films a ruptured pipe. So I suggest to move information out of these national subsections (and to remove subsections that end up being empty).

This applies even more to the subsection 'Speculation' (which is in itself an unfortunate, loaded word). I also think it is unhelpful here to structure the important information regarding the possible identity of the perpetrators into subsections of nationality. Because such a structure forces the placement of a given piece of information into a box with a specific allegation. The best example is the investigation of the leads related to the yacht 'Andromeda', which reportedly involves an address in Germany, a Polish company, citizens from Ukraine and a person with a Russian passport (and maybe more).

Case in point: the Andromeda investigation has now mushroomed to include one of the Ukrainian citizens being a suspected victim of identity theft which is in turn tied to a probably fake Romanian passport, another of the Ukrainian citizens being a somewhat shady but genuinely Ukrainian businessman who was under investigation before the attacks for fraud or tax evasion, an Uzbek who was possibly a majority partner of the aforementioned businessman and an assistant to Russian officials on Crimea being tied to the Russian passport as well as to a possibly fake Ukrainian one, yet another of the Ukrainian citizens supposedly being identified as Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and finally a probably fake Bulgarian passport that was apparently used by a man that spoke fairly fluent Polish.

It seems well warranted to re-sort the speculations per group as suggested below, before this escalates even further. It is well impossible to actually sort by nation, given the many suspected fake passports involved: Of the 3-4 "Ukrainian" nationals, at present only 1-2 have been confirmed to be genuine persons of Ukrainian nationality, and neither the "Romanian" nor the "Bulgarian" national seem genuine either... so if we'd sort by-country it would be well waranted to open an "Unknown nationality" section. But all of them are tied to the Andromeda investigation only. 2A02:908:4B33:BD80:2D56:B066:827D:80E (talk) 02:55, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Assigning this information to country-specific subsections is not helpful because it spreads connected information into separate subsections and combines other pieces of information that are actually unrelated.

Luckily, the reported suspicious activity falls into well separated groups:

• information related to the Andromeda yacht
• information regarding Russian naval ships
• Seymour Hersh's information (about US and Norwegian naval ships)

Excepted is a relatively small amount of other, notable suspicious activity, e.g. these (typically anonymous) tips from intelligence services about an impending attack.

Logically, if one of the above specific three is the perpetrator, then the other two are pretty much ruled out. This speaks for placing them at the same level in the article (e.g. in the above order).

So I think it would be an improvement to reorganize the information about the suspicious activity into the above groups, each in its subsection. It would certainly make it easier for editors to determine where to insert new information. They could be placed as subsections in a new section called e.g. 'Allegations'. This would replace the subsection Speculation - and a lot of information from the 'Cause' section could go to 'Allegations'. Naturally, actual allegations regarding people/entities of specific nationality would remain in the reorganized article text. If a new, notable lead is reported, it can go into its own, new section.

Among the many cited sources, there tend to be a pretty united view regarding the actual explosions and the investigations of the seabed. So this could stay in 'Cause' which would then focus more specifically on what caused the pipelines to rupture and not who did it - which seems much more difficult to describe.

Hoping not to leave anyone interested out, I ping various recent/active editors for input. @Mhorg, My very best wishes, Endwise, Alaexis, Ânes-pur-sàng, and HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith: What do you think? Lklundin (talk) 20:04, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

In general I like this approach. It was me who created the subsections for each country's investigation because 1) before that it was chronological and it was even harder to understand what was going on and 2) because none of the countries doing the investigation collaborate with each other [1]. But your approach is better, it just involves much more work.

Regarding the second group, in addition to the Russian naval vessels, there were Danish, Swedish, American and German vessels in the area at the time of the sabotage, with some of them straying from their usual patrolling routes. Information.dk talks about it in some detail "Apparently, both Denmark and Sweden are patrolling according to a pattern that is far from normal. It is not a place where neither the Swedes nor the Danes usually come out. The normal picture on a completely normal day in September is that something like this doesn't happen,' he says. google-translated from this article. Therefore I would probably give a more neutral name to that subsection, until the results of the Danish and Swedish investigations are available. Alaexis_¿question? 21:30, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

OK, good points. It is true, before the sabotage the area did see quite some naval activity from several countries. We could shorten the name of the subsection with that info to 'Naval ships'. Lklundin (talk) 08:03, 7 September 2023 (UTC) PS. There is no implied criticism of the original subsectioning, which in fact was natural given the separate, national investigations. Lklundin (talk) 08:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, this Danish article has a lot of highly detailed info on the out-of-bounds Danish naval activity of September 22: https://www.information.dk/indland/2023/04/forsvaret-bekraefter-rusland-specialfartoej-naer-nord-streams-spraengningspunkt 02:14, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Speculations: Involvement of Russia

Hi, perhaps some editor can add a bit of information to this section:

In July 2023 RTL and n-tv reported that the above-mentioned yacht Andromeda believed by German investigators to have played a role in the sabotage had been rented by a company owned by a named woman originally from Uzbekistan, who holds a Russian and a Ukrainian passport, who is registered to an address in Kerch on the Russia annexed peninsula Crimea and who in June 2023 was posting to social media from Krasnodar in Russia. Commenting on these findings, member of the German Bundestag and Oberst (retired) Roderich Kiesewetter stated that "Russia was involved in this attack".[95]

I have in my Web download dump an image file that seems to be a b/w scan of a photocopy of a passport. I downloaded it on July 12 2023, I think either from Twitter comment or from a news article on the RTL/n-tv investigation.
It is an Ukrainian passport no. FV663325 of a female named Diana, family name illegible but supposedly starting with "B" (as per file name). Dark, longish hair, DOB June 8 1990, country of birth Uzbekistan.
The intriguing thing is that its date of issue is July 2019. I do not know if it can be determined where the passport was applied from; the issuing authority is "8012" but that might be the place where the application was processed rather the place where it was made.

It is certain, however, that in Kerch, Crimea, no legitimate Ukrainian passports were issued anymore in July 2019, and in fact trying to do so would have gotten you arrested and charged with serious crimes.

This passport is remarkable and would seem to warrant a more detailed mention in the above-mentioned paragraph, if it indeed is the one referred to there. Perhaps a regular editor can try to locate the source of the image so it can be linked to the Wikipedia article (I do not have a Twitter account). I would suggest trying "diana"/"diana b" + "nord stream" as search strings, and maybe + "kerch" or "krasnodar". And also try "Диана" and "Діана", I do not even remember if it was an English source, it may well have been some Ukrainian or Russian remarking on it out on Twitter.

As for how to phrase this information in the article, if there is nothing in the source that can be cited directly, perhaps add after source 95 the following: "Remarkably, the woman's Ukrainian passport has a date of issue of July 2019, meaning it could not have been legitimately issued in Kerch (or anywhere else in Russian-controlled territory)." and then simply cite the image source, plus a source for the Russian decree prohibiting the issue of Ukrainian passports in Crimea (maybe https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-crimea-russia-passports/25303107.html will do).

It is also significant that Krasnodar is the main Russian military/logistics hub at the mainland side of the Crimea Bridge supply route, and security is accordingly tight. Even being caught possessing an Ukrainian passport is likely to get you in trouble (it would get you in more trouble than it would in Kerch), and one has to expect occasional roadblocks and ID checks throughout the Krasnodar area. In that context, it is significant that unlike nearby military installations (eg Novorossiysk base) Krasnodar and its immediate surroundings have so far seen very few Ukrainian drone attacks and other activity related to pro-Ukrainian saboteurs/partisans, which indicates that security is indeed very tight there even though I found no direct reports by citeable sources.
This should be kept in mind if there is a follow-up on this woman; additional media reports might reflect on the extreme unlikelihood of a genuine pro-Ukrainian Nord Stream saboteur winding up in such a place of all places after the bombing and even posting on social media about it, and can be cited to that accord. It is surely remarkable that such a person would be in Russia at all, and it is outrageously unusual for her to be in the rear area of the Russian side of a war zone.

As an aside, in several other Nord Stream media reports I have seen throwaway references to this woman "not having an Ukrainian passport". Perhaps this is a case of lost-in-translation/transmission and originally meant "she has no GENUINE Ukrainian passport", which fit the data above.

Thanks in advance! 2A02:908:4B33:BD80:2D56:B066:827D:80E (talk) 02:14, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

That sounds a lot like a Ukrainian propaganda, no? 197.60.124.169 (talk) 00:53, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Ukrainian Involvement

I just wanted to summarize WaPo's findings to date:

No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack

U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline

And now

Ukrainian military officer coordinated Nord Stream pipeline attack

The current article as written focuses heavily on pointing at Russian involvement. Given these recent new evidence, should that continue to be the case? As written, the article looks like misinformation. Fephisto (talk) 13:41, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

If there are reliable sources pointing in multiple opposing directions, then this article should reflect the apparent uncertainty. Wizmut (talk) 19:14, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Hardly any sources point to the Russian trail anymore, so the article must reflect the general attitude in the world. Insisting on speculation without the support of evidence is wrong and the article must be rectified. Mhorg (talk) 10:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I think you're right. Articles like these grow by accretion and if we were to start writing it from scratch now it would've looked different. What changes do you propose? Alaexis_¿question? 10:25, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I've made an attempt here in my sandbox. I've removed a lot of the "This report said X's ship was near the area at Y date" speculations (in my opinion, many of these statements fall under SYNTH). I made the investigations part of the timeline section, attempted to condense down the speculation section to an "initial" speculations indicating the history of speculations regarding Russia or U.S. involvement and all of the reporting around the Hersh article because there was a lot of past talk page history about that, so I think it's historically important to keep that information there, and then made a more "current" section involving the recent WaPo and now Reuters reports. Fephisto (talk) 00:32, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Looks good! I think that the Speculation title doesn't really work for all the content of this section (the WP and Der Spiegel findings are based on an *investigation*), but I'm not sure what other title would work better. Alaexis_¿question? 21:41, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right. No idea what to try calling it though, either. Fephisto (talk) 00:06, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

@Alaexis: I busted out the thesaurus, how's it look now? Fephisto (talk) 15:09, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

It's better now, thanks! Probably, in a few months we'll see whether the version involving Chervinsky becomes the dominant one or is challenged, and also at some point all those official investigation are supposed to publish their results, then we'd have to re-work both Investigations and Analysis sections into one coherent narrative. Alaexis_¿question? 07:53, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 9 December 2023

I think the beginning of this page is odd and aberrant. Why is the Washington Post's voice the only one provided when attributing blame? It reeks of bias, there should be multiple perspectives provided, and certainly not leaning entirely on one newspaper. Mohammed Al-Keesh (talk) 04:32, 9 December 2023 (UTC)