Resolves to the consensus as of March 31st 2024. This will only resolve to one answer, and if multiple answers are applicable I will choose the 'best' answer (most specific and correct).
If no country is responsible for the attack for by current consensus, this will resolve N/A. I will also resolve N/A if, say, one government agency made a mistake which led to the explosions, but consensus is that this was not intentional. If I believe that there is no consensus on this question, this will resolve N/A.
For reference, this is the attack I am referring to: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63044747
1,000
3.00@JamesGrugett I’d like to resolve N/A but looks like I don’t have the requisite mana balance for it - it gave me an error message / asked me to ask a mod. What should I do? Feel free to resolve N/A manually yourself, whatever that requires.
This Reuter's article is a good summary of the existing information (and I've read most of the other relevant info) https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-what-is-known-about-nord-stream-gas-pipeline-explosions-2023-09-26.
In November last year, The Washington Post reported that Roman Chervinsky, a former intelligence official who served in the Ukrainian military's special forces, managed the six-person team, but did not plan the attack. He denied involvement.
The Post said Chervinsky took orders from senior Ukrainian officials who ultimately reported to Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhnyi. Reuters was unable to verify the report independently. Zaluzhnyi has made no public comment.
Germany's Der Spiegel and ZDF have said that a group of six people - five men and one woman - boarded Andromeda in Rostock, Germany, on Sept. 6, using forged passports, and returned to Rostock on Sept. 23.
The yacht was spotted at a small Danish island of Christianso, near the explosion sites, on Sept. 16-18, and made a short stop at a marina in Kolobrzeg, Poland on Sept. 19, before returning to Germany
This all gives rather strong subjective evidence that Ukraine was to blame for the sabotage. However, nearly all the information is based on anonymous sources, the articles themselves don't seem to place full confidence in their information ("The new intelligence provided no evidence so far of the Ukrainian government’s complicity in the attack on the pipelines" -NYT), and governments/intelligence agencies have no consensus. Thus, I plan to resolve this market N/A. I'll do this on April 31st by default, unless anyone shares information I'm missing or a strong argument against this resolution.
@NicholasCharette73b6 Oh, I copied the wrong section of the article. I meant to include the following excerpt:
Some U.S. and European officials initially suggested Moscow had blown up its own pipelines, an interpretation dismissed as "idiotic" by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Instead, Putin has blamed "Anglo-Saxons", using Kremlin's term for the U.S. and Britain, without providing evidence. It has also blamed Ukraine. All three countries deny any role.
The White House last year dismissed a blog post by a U.S. investigative journalist alleging Washington was behind explosions as "utterly false and complete fiction."
The U.S., opens new tab and German media have reported that the yacht could have been used by a Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian group, citing leaked intelligence reports and people familiar with official investigations. Kyiv has repeatedly denied any involvement.
HOW MIGHT AN ATTACK HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT?
In November last year, The Washington Post reported that Roman Chervinsky, a former intelligence official who served in the Ukrainian military's special forces, managed the six-person team, but did not plan the attack. He denied involvement.
The Post said Chervinsky took orders from senior Ukrainian officials who ultimately reported to Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhnyi. Reuters was unable to verify the report independently. Zaluzhnyi has made no public comment.
@SirCryptomind This question is specified to resolve on March 31st 2024, in order to avoid some quirks of the parimutuel system that was in place when it was created. I'm planning to stick to that commitment, since I'm not sure if the market still operates on the parimutuel system (if it doesn't, it'll be fine to reopen it until March 31st 2024).
Ukraine has named Roman Chervinskyi, a former Ukrainian secret service agent, as the coordinator of the attacks but that he was acting on his own. The article leaves lots of room for scepticism - he's already in jail on unrelated dubious accusations that appear to be politically motivated.
@NicholasCharette73b6 might you resolve early if a definitive consensus is established before March 31st 2024?
@chrisjbillington I'll wait until March 31st, both because the decision of when to resolve adds a lot of complexity and bias, and because sometimes the 'definitive consensus' becomes less definitive / agreed-upon over time.
German newspaper Die Zeit is saying that it was the Dutch that warned the CIA about the Ukrainian plot, the CIA warned Ukraine not to do it, they delayed and did it anyway.
"Six members of the Ukrainian special forces planned to rent a boat using false identities and dive to the Nord Stream pipeline using diving equipment and a special helium mixture. The pipeline runs approximately 80 meters deep on the floor of the Baltic Sea. The Ukrainian special forces were supposed to report directly to the Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Four-Star General Valeriy Saluschnyj, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not involved.
. . .
Shortly after the September attacks, the Dutch military intelligence service contacted again. In another confidential report, apparently based on the account of a source in Ukraine, Ukraine was named as the country from which the attack originated.
. . . Apparently, the Ukrainian group preparing the attack continued undeterred but made several changes to the operation, such as the timing and the starting point." [translation via Chat GPT]
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-06/nord-stream-sabotage-pipeline-usa-ukraine-spur
Chat GPT translation:
https://chat.openai.com/share/cbef75d6-11b1-4cfe-80af-baeb7d1ee55a
(Side note - I compared portions of Google and Chat GPT's translations and didn't notice any discrepancies, but Chat GPT's English is more natural and flows much better. I do not speak German.)
WSJ article with more details on the ongoing investigations. Seems like they are focused on Ukrainian individuals from Ukraine and Poland, not government agencies.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nord-stream-sabotage-probe-turns-to-clues-inside-poland-4ed20422
(paywalled 😐)
"And while recent findings appear to have strengthened the view of investigators that Ukrainians staged the plot, they are also examining whether Polish territory might have been used for the attack.
. . .
The first clear warning that a Ukrainian attack on the pipelines could be imminent came from an intelligence service of a European country in June 2022. That agency informed the Central Intelligence Agency that a small group of members of Ukraine’s armed forces were planning on sabotaging the pipeline that same month.
The CIA passed that warning on to Germany and other allies, but by early September, several governments concluded the threat had passed, according to officials in several countries who were familiar with the notice.
. . .
Investigators are probing whether at least some of that DNA belongs to a Ukrainian soldier they have identified—building on a hypothesis that at least some of the culprits are linked to Ukrainian armed forces units."
U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline
"Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
. . .
The European intelligence reporting was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira."
Kim Dotcom:
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1660421021793652736
"The P-8A Poseidon took off >BEFORE< the first explosion and was heading to the coordinates were the explosion would occur."
@ShakedKoplewitz It also feels like more the style of a slightly-autocratic anti-russian eastern european country to do this than Biden/the Pentagon's style.
Financial Times: Germany searched ship suspected of transporting Nord Stream saboteurs
New York Times: Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines