dyton mupawaenda
Herald Correspondent
Countering terrorism and preventing financing terrorism are critical tasks facing the international community.
Terrorism is used to intimidate and pressurise the target into fulfilling the terrorists’ demands.
It is also used to make the target forgo their goals, and is mainly directed towards specific countries.
Targeted terrorist attacks may be carried out by individuals, criminal organisations or countries.
Terrorist attacks pose a heightened public danger by the sheer scale of the crime and may affect performance of a specific infrastructural/social/religious facility or institution, civil society or, on a larger scale, the national security of an entire country or region.
Terrorist activities can be carried out by the countries and their intelligence services under cover of certain individuals or non-governmental organisations that may have a stake in such activities.
Increasingly, terrorist attacks are being used as a tool to interfere in various countries’ domestic affairs.
Despite the general focus on the systematic fight against terrorism, which is high on the international cooperation agenda, the number of cases of terrorist activity and the scale of their aftermath show a certain level of involvement of national intelligence services’ representatives.
The most notorious terrorist attack of recent decades, which affected strategic security in several countries, involved the bombing of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline branches (hereinafter referred to as NS1 and NS2) in September 2022.
The NS1 and NS2 projects were implemented by Nord Stream AG, an international company controlled by shareholders from several European countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, as well as the Russian Federation.
The company operated the NS1 and NS2 pipelines, its activities being of strategic importance for most of the European region as they concerned energy security and the transportation of Russian gas to the EU via Germany.
The developments that preceded the launch of NS2 indicated some special interest on the part of certain representatives of the US leadership in sabotaging the issuance of permits for the launch and use of NS2 by European licensees.
Some of their statements were indeed radical and extremist.
Below are examples of such statements made by top US officials before the underwater explosions damaged the pipelines:
* January 18, 2022. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at a US State Department briefing: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2013586/world
* February 7, 2022. US President Joe Biden after a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “If Russia invades Ukraine then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-unified-front-against-any-russian-aggression-toward-2022-02-07/
In addition to the above statements, the attack on NS1 and NS2 was preceded by a number of military-political events in the area where the pipelines are located in the Baltic Sea.
The article by leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, ‘How America took out the Nord Stream’ contains a detailed timeline of the attack.
According to Hersh’s conclusions, based on information obtained from knowledgeable sources and cross-referenced with open-source data, senior political, military and intelligence officials in the United States had held a number of meetings and activities aimed at planning an operation to destroy NS1 and NS2 namely:
* December 2021. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a secret meeting of a task force consisting of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State Department and the Treasury Department at the White House to plan an operation to sabotage NS2. At the meeting, Sullivan presented the task to the participants as US President Joe Biden’s order.
* Early 2022. A CIA working group reported to Sullivan’s task force that they had found a way to undermine the pipelines. Having shared the details and sequences of the steps it was going to take, as well as its plans, the United States went on to make statements on bombing the Nord Stream pipelines, while remaining just as specific and radical in its posturing.
* September 30, 2022 – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his Press conference: “It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponisation of energy…”
* On January 27, 2023, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told Senator Ted Cruz during a sitting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “I am and, I think, the Administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
In his investigative article, Seymour Hersh pointed out that the Biden administration focused throughout the planning process on keeping the operation secret and ensuring that the United States or other NATO member States could not be suspected of being involved.
Here is a quote from an informed source: “If the attack were traceable to the United States, ‘It’s an act of war.’”
The New York Times provided a detailed account of the CIA’s involvement with the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate over a period of more than ten years of cooperation between special services on intelligence matters.
In its article, the newspaper also mentioned the initiative to set up a special commando force, known as Unit 2245, for carrying out targeted terrorist attacks.
It was within this unit that the CIA operatives and curators trained Kirill Budanov before he headed the Ukrainian military intelligence. He enjoyed the support of the CIA and developed a wide network of contacts with it, enabling him to coordinate his efforts directly with the CIA.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
According to available data, US specialists offered organizational and technical support, including diving equipment, Romanian documents for the cover-up and explosives, and also oversaw the operation led by Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy to Ukraine, Christopher W. Smith, who had previously served with ISAF.
Former head of Ukrainian intelligence Vasily Burba also contributed to the operation.
Having succeeded in his mission, Smith went on to receive an appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Eastern Europe and Policy and Regional Affairs at the US Department of State.
The team trained in a deep-water quarry lake in the Zhitomir Region, and then travelled to Romania where its members stayed under Romanian documents in a private home not far from a Romanian Navy base in Mangalia.
They continued their training in an environment which closely resembled the conditions near the Nord Stream pipelines.
Having completed its training, the group moved to Poland where it rented a smaller yacht, the Andromeda.
Ruslan Rudenko and Oleg Varava, diver and technician with Marisha, were the divers who submerged to the Nord Stream pipelines.
Online Reporter