Berlin is giving “billions” in aid to the “chief suspect” in the gas pipelines explosion, Sahra Wagenknecht has said
Germany urgently needs an independent parliamentary probe into the Nord Stream sabotage, veteran German left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht said in a video published on Thursday. If it’s proven that Kiev was behind the 2022 attack on the gas pipeline, it should be held responsible, she added.
The lawmaker, who also leads her own party – the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – questioned what she calls Berlin’s “deafening silence” two years after the incident. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet has stubbornly refused to share any substantial details about the ongoing inquiry into the blasts or its results with the parliament, she argued.
The MP then cited numerous Western media reports pointing the finger at a group of Ukrainian divers, who supposedly blew up the Russian undersea pipelines that had delivered natural gas to Germany. The privately funded group was supposedly acting on orders from General Valery Zaluzhny, who was later dismissed and became Kiev’s ambassador to the UK, Der Spiegel reported earlier this month.
“Anyone who has friends like this really does not need any enemies,” Wagenknecht said, adding that “if this story is true, then we really have had a scandal of the century.” The politician then cited other reports suggesting that Berlin may have been warned by the CIA in advance about the potential attack but still took no action. The subsequent government silence in the wake of the incident raises even more questions, she added.
“This refusal to cooperate with parliament and the public makes the establishment of an investigative committee, requested… by the BSW, ever more urgent,” Wagenknecht said. Berlin has yet to provide any official information on the probe. In August, German media reported that the authorities had issued a first arrest warrant in the case, allegedly for a Ukrainian national identified as “Vladimir Z.”
“The need for investigation is all the more urgent since Ukraine, which is a recipient of billions of German taxpayers’ money, is the chief suspect,” Wagenknecht said.
“If Ukraine is responsible for the terrorist act against the German energy supply, the arms deliveries must end immediately and the question of compensation must be put on the table.”
Germany is the second-biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine, totalling over €10 billion ($11.19 billion) between January 2022 and June 2024, according to the Kiel Institute for World Economy. Berlin has also provided Kiev with almost $5 billion in humanitarian and financial assistance over the same period, according to the think tank’s estimates.
