Undersea ‘blasts’ recorded at same time Russia-Germany gas pipelines damaged

Published

3 years ago

September 27, 2022

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Mysterious leaks in the Nord Stream gas pipe network began with “powerful subsea blasts” and resulted from “deliberate actions”.

Two pipelines running underwater from Russia to Germany were damaged in a total of three places on Monday.

Nord Stream AG, the owner, described the breakages as “unprecedented”. The pipes were not pumping gas to Europe at the time the leaks were found amid the dispute over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, said it was an “act of sabotage”, while his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said she views the leaks as “deliberate actions”, and the Danish energy authority said any event like this was “extremely rare”.

Dramatic gas bubbles rising to the sea’s surface measure 100m in diameter and will continue for several days, the authority said.

The two pipes were damaged near the Danish island of Bornholm in the southern Baltic Sea.

The Kremlin said it could not rule out sabotage as a cause of the damage, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing developments as “very concerning news”.

A European security source said: “There are some indications that it is deliberate damage. You have to ask: Who would profit?”

A reading from a nearby seismograph, which records vibrations on the planet’s surface, was found to show spikes at similar times to when the losses in pressure in the pipes were first recorded, according to a German geology research centre.

‘No doubt these were explosions’

Sweden’s national seismology centre said its stations recorded “powerful subsea blasts” in the area where the gas leaks occurred, the latter measuring the equivalent of a magnitude-2.3 earthquake.

Bjorn Lund, a seismologist with Uppsala University who is part of Sweden’s national seismic network, told the national broadcaster SVT: “There is no doubt that these were explosions.”

He said the first was recorded in the early hours of Monday southeast of Bornholm. The latter and stronger blast on Monday evening was northeast of the island and equivalent to 100kg of dynamite.

“We know very well what an underwater blast looks like. And so in this case, there’s no doubt this is not an earthquake,” Mr Lund said.

Earlier, the country’s Maritime Authority had issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, northeast of Bornholm, which until the Ukraine war provided about 60% of Germany’s gas needs.

On Monday, Denmark issued a warning about a leak in the yet-to-be-opened Nord Stream 2 pipeline, south of Dueodde, which had been built to boost the amount of Russian gas supplied to Germany.

Were the leaks caused by Russian sabotage?

On Tuesday, a ceremony was held to inaugurate a new pipeline, Baltic Pipe, to carry Norwegian gas through Denmark to Poland, which it is hoped will ease some pressure on European gas supplies.

Simone Tagliapietra, an energy expert with the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels, said the leaks “can’t be a coincidence” and speculated they could have been caused by Russian sabotage or anti-Russian sabotage.

One possibility is Russia signalling it “is breaking forever with Western Europe and Germany” as Poland inaugurates its pipeline with Norway, he said.

‘Unprecedented destruction’

The leak from Nord Stream 2, discovered by the Danish Defence F-16 interceptor response unit, prompted the setting up of a five nautical mile exclusion zone, to protect shipping from any danger.

The Danes have now marked off the leak from Nord Stream 1.

Nord Stream AG said it was impossible to estimate when the gas network system would be working again.

“The destruction that occurred on the same day simultaneously on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system is unprecedented,” it said.

“It is not yet possible to estimate the timing of the restoration of the gas transport infrastructure.”

Nord Stream 1’s twin undersea pipelines opened in 2011, with the ability to supply up to 27.5 billion cubic metres of gas a year each.

But since fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the EU’s determination to cut its reliance on Russian gas, flows through the Nord Stream 1 have reduced to zero.

Russia has been accused of using gas supply as a weapon, something Russia blames on Western sanctions. The German government has withheld the licence of Nord Stream 2 because of Russia’s actions.

Despite not carrying gas to Germany and beyond, both pipelines have apparently remained full of gas, which is now leaking into the sea.

It was not immediately clear what consequences would follow, especially as methane in the atmosphere is a driver of climate change. The EU Commission said it would analyse the potential impact.

German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe said any effects from an explosion would be local and that some gas would dissolve in the sea.

The cut in supplies of Russian gas to Europe is one of the main drivers of higher gas prices that have caused inflation to surge in the UK and elsewhere.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.