The involvement of a “state actor” in the pipeline explosion Nord Stream last year is the “absolutely master script”, although confirming his identity will prove difficult, the Swedish prosecutor investigating the attack said Thursday.

In September 2022, undersea explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and the under-construction Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Russia to Germany. The blasts took place in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark, and both countries say the explosions were deliberate but have yet to determine who is responsible.

The explosion in the Swedish EEZ occurred at a depth of 80 meters, which, according to the Swedish prosecutor, complicates the investigation into it.

“We think it will be rather difficult to determine who did this,” prosecutor Mats Ljungvist said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

“The people who did this probably knew they were going to leave evidence behind and probably made sure the evidence didn’t point in one direction, but in several directions,” he added.

“This makes it difficult to clearly point to a perpetrator.” The investigation continues.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought Europe’s dependence on Russian gas into the political spotlight, and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines hastened the Union’s shift to other energy suppliers.

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, each consisting of two pipelines, were built by Russian state-controlled Gazprom to deliver 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to Germany.

Ljungvist said investigators were able to determine the type of explosives used and that this ruled out “a very large number of perpetrators,” but declined to name the type of explosives, citing the ongoing investigation.

While no conclusion has been drawn, various theories have been put forward as to who blew up the pipelines and how.

Germany has confirmed that its investigators raided a vessel in January that may have been used to transport the explosives used to blow up the pipelines. German media reported that the vessel could had been used by a Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian group.

Ljungvist said the possibility that an independent group, rather than a state actor, was behind the attack could not be completely ruled out. but this is not likely.

“There are certain companies that have certain special missions that mean they could, in theory, carry it out,” he said. “We are not ruling anything out, but that it is a state factor that is directly or at least indirectly behind this is of course our absolutely main scenario, given all the circumstances.”

The American journalist Seymour Hers reported earlier this year how the US authorities, with the help of the Norwegian army, they were behind the attack.
The United States and Ukraine have denied any involvement in the attacks, as has Russia. Moscow, without providing evidence of this, attributed responsibility for the explosions to Western sabotage.

Ljungvist said the incident has become an open field for attempts to influence the proceedings, possibly with the aim of deliberately causing confusion. “I don’t want to comment on any specific report, but I can conclude that many of the ‘hot’ theories can be easily ruled out based on what we know from the research,” he said.