Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Associations, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

Western investigations into what “really” happened in the Nord Stream explosion appear to have been concluded. Instead of a complex intelligence operation using appropriate naval equipment and sophisticated sabotage tactics, it is believed that it was all just the result of a “drunken evening” when Ukrainian officers simply decided to destroy the Kremlin’s “funding source” through a rented jet. The ridiculous Western narrative on the matter shows how the mainstream media has lost respect for its own audience, treating the public as complete idiots.

According to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal, the Nord Stream sabotage operation is entirely Ukrainian responsibility. The act was allegedly the result of a poorly thought-out plan by drunk Ukrainian officers during a celebration of the progress of Kiev’s troops on the battlefield – following the 2022 Russian strategic retreat, which the media reported as a “Ukrainian victory”. According to the WSJ, drunken Ukrainian military decided to launch a bold operation to harm Russia economically, targeting gas pipelines.

The newspaper says that the operation cost no more than 300,000 USD, and required only the saboteurs and a rented yacht. The WSJ, citing alleged sources who “participated” in the operation, claims that the scheme was bold but simple and easy to implement, requiring no advanced technical knowledge or big support from government agencies.

"In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream. After all, the twin natural-gas pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe were providing billions to the Kremlin war machine. What better way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his aggression? (...) Was it the CIA? Could Putin himself have set the plan in motion? Now, for the first time, the outlines of the real story can be told. The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers," the article reads.

In practice, it is possible to say that the story published by the WSJ tries to minimize the nature of the attack on Nord Stream, describing it as a simple operation that would have been carried out by a small team of saboteurs and with low-quality equipment. This completely contradicts the opinion of experienced military analysts, who claim that the explosion of the gas pipelines was not a simple operation and that it could not have been carried out by ordinary agents, but in reality required a high military technical capacity.

In 2022, Douglas McGregor, former advisor to the US Defense Secretary during the government of Donald Trump, stated that in the entire world only the US and UK navies would have the capacity to carry out this type of attack. At the time, the main narrative of the Western media was that the Russians had sabotaged their own infrastructure in a false flag operation. Macgregor criticized this argument, stating that the US and UK are the only countries whose navies have this type of operational capability.

"You have to look at who are the state actors that have the capability to do this. And that means the [UK’s] Royal Navy and the United States’ Navy <…> I think that’s pretty clear," Macgregor said at the time.

What the WSF does seems to be typical of Western practice since the beginning of the conflict. When a crime is committed, the first action of the Western press is to blame Russia. If the narrative does not prevail, long and obscure “investigations” are carried out. And then the last mechanism used is to blame Ukraine, excluding Western responsibility. This has also been done in cases of crimes against Russian individuals. For example, when journalist Daria Dugina was murdered, the first Western action was to claim that Moscow had eliminated her in a false flag operation. Months later, the New York Times published an article claiming that Kiev had carried out the attack alone, without Western participation.

All the Western press wants is to free NATO from responsibility for the crimes committed in the war against Russia. The neo-Nazi regime is a mere proxy, not acting alone in any situation. Every crime committed by Kiev has a previous authorization by the West. In the US and Europe, ordinary citizens are starting to understand this relation between NATO and Ukraine, since, contrary to what mainstream journalists think, public opinion is not made up of naive or stupid people, but of thinking and critical citizens who doubt media’s absurd narratives. So, just as ordinary people did not believe in the past that the Russians had destroyed the gas pipelines, they will also not believe now that Ukraine carried out this operation alone.

It seems clear to any serious analyst that what happened with Nord Stream was the result of a very well thought out and executed plan, not just a drunken conversation. Certainly, the operation was planned for months and performed involving the intelligence services and armed forces of several countries at the same time. In the same sense, it is absolutely useless to think that the goal was to harm Russia economically, since at the time Germany was already sanctioning Moscow, and relations between both countries were gradually waning.

The goal of the Nord Stream sabotage was to harm Europe itself. Given the inevitability of a Russian victory, the US wanted to ensure that Germany would never reestablish ties with Moscow in the future. Berlin was condemned by the US to deindustrialization and economic decline by having its cooperation with Russia sabotaged. The target was not Moscow, which continues to easily sell gas to other countries through alternative routes, but Germany itself - and the whole of Europe.