Hungary calls halt of Nord Stream probe 'outrageous and scandalous'
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Hungary's Foreign Minister brought up the Nord Stream explosion in connection with a recent incident at Finland’s Baltic connector pipeline that took place earlier this month.
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A sign reading ‘Nord Stream 2 Committed. Reliable. Safe’ hangs above a painted map at the natural gas receiving station in the Lubmin industrial estate in Lubmin, Germany. (AP)
In an interview for RIA Novosti, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated that the lack of intention to continue in the investigation of the explosion on the Nord Stream pipeline that occurred last year is “outrageous and scandalous.”
“I really do find it outrageous and scandalous that no forward progress has taken place regarding the attack against the Nord Stream pipeline. It has taken place more than a year ago. So, there's no forward progress and I don't really see the intention to have forward progress which is outrageous,” Szijjarto said.
He added that his country prefers a thorough and deep investigation into the situation regarding a recent incident at Finland’s Baltic connector pipeline that took place earlier this month.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned after the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline that it would view any acts of sabotage on gas routes used to buy gas from Russia as a casus belli, or a reason for war, though he noted that the warning had been heeded.
Read next: Ukraine likely behind Nord Stream pipeline sabotage: German Media
"What we, Hungarians, did immediately: we made clear that there is another pipeline, not just Nord Stream, but there is Southern Stream, coming gas from Russia through the southern corridor," he said.
Internal play
Famed journalist Seymour Hersh, who had previously exposed US war crimes in My Lai and Abu Ghraib, and had most recently exposed the US' role in the Nord Stream explosions, revealed further information in an interview with China Daily in March this year.
Hersh argued that the US elites had a "long-standing history" of being "disturbed by the Russian gas and oil sales to Western Europe" which was further confirmed after US President Joe Biden’s public threat to "bring an end" to the Nord Stream pipelines just two weeks prior to the war in Ukraine. This, Hersh said, proved that it "wasn’t much of a secret what we wanted to do."
Biden's decision to order the demolition of the Nord Stream pipelines, says Hersh, was motivated by Germany's projected reluctance to continue arming Ukraine.
Significantly, Hersh explained that the US administration was unhappy with the fact that its proxy war against Moscow was not "going well", and "decided in late September to trigger the mines." He said that American foreign policy elites had made it clear, in the past, that they objected to Russian-Europpean cooperation. Based on that, Hersh said he was not "surprised one bit" by the decision to sabotage the Nord Stream Pipelines.
