'A Russian navy vessel specialising in submarine operations was photographed near the sabotaged Nord Stream gas pipelines just prior to the mysterious September blasts, according to the Danish daily newspaper Information.
The prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation into the sabotage confirmed the existence of the hitherto publicly unknown photographs.
“I’m aware of the information from before … This is not new information to us,” Mats Ljungqvist said on Friday.
The newspaper said the submarine rescue ship SS-750 was photographed in the Baltic Sea four days before the still-unexplained explosions on the pipelines linking Russia to Germany. The ship carries a mini-submarine.
“The Danish military confirmed that 26 photos of the Russian vessel were taken from a Danish patrol boat in the zone located east of Bornholm on 22 September 2022,” Information said, adding the photos were classified.
The Danish military has not responded to AFP’s request for comment.
Ljungqvist said he could not comment on the photographs’ significance to the Swedish investigation, noting it was “confidential”.
Seven months after the spectacular blasts on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, it has yet to be established who was responsible, despite criminal investigations in the countries bordering the damaged part of the pipelines, Germany, Sweden and Denmark.
The New York Times reported in March that US officials had seen new intelligence indicating that a “pro-Ukrainian group” was responsible, without the involvement of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
German prosecutors subsequently said that, in January, investigators had searched a ship suspected of having transported explosives used in the blasts.
In March, Ljungqvist said it was “still unclear” who was behind the sabotage, calling it “a complex case”. “Our primary assumption is that a state is behind it,” he said.
A former Danish intelligence officer turned analyst, Jacob Kaarsbo, told Information that the presence of SS-750 in the zone “sheds light on what was going on in the region in the preceding days”.
The confirmation was of particular interest “because we know it is capable of carrying out such an operation”, he said.'
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Russian navy ship photographed near Nord Stream pipelines before blasts, April 28, 2023
Context(Soviet/Russian disasters) - The Nord Stream pipelines, lack of Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services (PMCS)