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
Related questions
@NicholasCharette73b6 might you resolve early if a definitive consensus is established before March 31st 2024?
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."
Poland (or another eastern European country) seems like an underrated option here: They have more motivation than the US to push western Europe to take a stand against Russia since they're more directly threatened, and they'd almost certainly have the capability.
@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
I made some initial trades in order to recoup a little bit of the M$100 used to create the market. I plan to have zero exposure to this market by its close.
