The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Tuesday that “Nord Stream Probe Hampered by Resistance From Poland”, which cites unnamed European investigators who told them that their Polish counterparts were unwilling or unable to cooperate, and sometimes shared contradictory information when they did. According to the outlet’s sources, “efforts by Polish officials to hinder their investigation have made them increasingly suspicious of Warsaw’s role and motives.”
The WSJ was the first to report last summer that the Ukrainian sabotage crew that Western officials claim was responsible for September 2022’s ecological terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea had docked in a Polish port, but it was analyzed here that this was just a red herring to deflect from US complicity. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited unnamed US administration sources last February to accuse them of carrying out this attack, which Russia agreed with but Washington predictably denied.
That outlet’s latest report appears predicated on advancing the same narrative goal as their abovementioned one, albeit this time by implying a greater degree of confidence that Polish officials might have played a role in what happened even “without the knowledge of the political leadership.” They hope that the return of Poland’s Europhile Prime Minister Donald Tusk will inspire officials who could have been under political pressure by the former government to cooperate with the investigation.
The problem, however, is that “Days after taking up office, Tusk fired the heads of all the intelligence services, including those involved in the Nord Stream probe.” This purge of the intelligence wing of his country’s permanent bureaucracy went largely unreported by the Western media but would have certainly made headlines if a multipolar conservative-sovereigntist leader did the same instead of a unipolar liberal-globalist one like him. In any case, this creates more investigative complications.
Nevertheless, observers shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that President Putin confirmed his belief late last month that “This was done, most likely, by the Americans or someone at their instruction.” The WSJ’s latest report deflects from that country’s complicity by extending credence to the theory that a rogue Ukrainian sabotage group was responsible and builds upon it by implying Polish complicity as well. This latest narrative twist serves to kill two birds with one stone at a politically convenient moment.
First, it suggests that the former Polish government with whom Tusk is viciously feuding nowadays over his liberal-totalitarian policies towards the media and illegal immigration was at the very least criminally negligent in not stopping the largest act of sabotage on European soil since World War II. At the very worst, it was allegedly complicit in this attack that the past year’s unofficial Western narrative claims was carried out by rogue Ukrainians without Zelensky’s knowledge.
This leads to the second bird that’s being killed with the same stone since it reminds the public that he might also have been criminally negligent in not controlling his own forces or punishing them after the past year’s reports emerged claiming that certain individuals were involved in some respect. The timing couldn’t be worse for Zelensky since it comes as the Western narrative decisively shifts even more against his country’s interests as documented here and further explained here regarding his latest rant.
The ball is now in Tusk’s court since he can either play along in implicating his political opponents and thus advance his goal of improving ties with the German-led EU or pass up these two opportunities in solidarity with Zelensky like he and returning Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky pledged to do last month. The first would advance the domestic and European vector of his administration’s policies but at the expense of the Ukrainian one, while the second would advance the latter at the expense of the former.
It remains unclear what Tusk will ultimately do, but no one should forget that this latest development is designed to deflect from American complicity while discrediting the former Polish government and putting more pressure on Zelensky as the Ukrainian Conflict finally winds down. When placed in its appropriate context, the timing of the WSJ’s latest report makes a lot more sense, which will hopefully convince more folks of the self-interested political reasons behind this unofficial Western theory.