UNSC to vote on Russian resolution probe into Nord Stream explosion
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is set to establish an investigation into the Nord Stream explosions.
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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (AP)
The vote on the Russian resolution presented to the UN Security Council, which requests that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres establish a commission to investigate the explosions that happened at the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September, will take place on Monday at 19:00 GMT.
Russia presented a draft UN Security Council resolution in February requesting that the UN Secretary-General establish an independent international commission to investigate allegations made by US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh that the explosions were executed by the US with the help of Norway.
Russia considers the explosions that struck the two pipes an act of international terrorism. There have been no formal findings from the investigation, but US journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed that the US is behind the explosion, and has offered a number of insights into the subject. The US denies its involvement in the incident.
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."
He 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.
"Because Russia has a nearly ‘inexhaustible’ supply of ‘cheap and very clean’ natural gas, America has a long-standing history… of being very disturbed by the Russian gas and oil sales to Western Europe," Hersh stated.
In a nutshell, the journalist explained, the attack on Nord Stream meant that Biden "cut off a major power source through Western Europe," and thus, consequentially, "Europe is in a crisis now."
However, this crisis will inevitably have a ripple effect that will come to haunt the Biden administration down the road, given that energy prices will continue to rise. Ergo, Hersh said "this summer and fall, it’s going to be very difficult for Biden," and explained that Biden is "going to get a lot of criticism for what he did, that’s for sure."
