In mid-February 2023, major Telegram channels disseminated Ursula von der Leyen’s commentary regarding data that explosions on Russian gas pipelines could have been American sabotage. We checked whether she made such a statement.
On February 16, more than a hundred Telegram channels quoted the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who allegedly said: “The version of US involvement in sabotage of the gas pipelines [Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2] seems absurd to us. Over all the years of America's existence, not a single fact of violation of international law or actions outside the framework of international law has been established or confirmed. The impeccable reputation of the American state allows us not to consider this version.” Among the largest channels that provided this quote were Colonelcassad (841,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis), “Dmitry Vasilets"(550,000), "Russian format"(315,000), "⚡️🇷🇺 Reports of the Novorossiya militia Z.O.V. (DPR, LPR, Ukraine, war)"(289,000), "Mriya" (153,000), "Old Square"(118,000), "Cyber Front Z 🇷🇺"(116,000), "War history weapons" (106,000) and "Denazification UA"(94,000). The statement of the head of the European Commission was also shared by users Facebook*, Twitter, "VKontakte", "Zena", YouTube, LiveJournal and others platforms.
On September 26, 2022, near the Danish island of Bornholm, several explosions occurred on the underwater gas pipelines Nord Stream (operational since 2011) and Nord Stream 2 (completed at the end of 2021, but not put into operation), due to which three of the four lines were disabled. Representatives of the authorities of Denmark, as well as Sweden and Poland, located near the scene of the incident, the very next day characterized what happened as a sabotage, and local police and experts began an investigation without publicly naming possible suspects. September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused “Anglo-Saxons” in the Nord Stream explosions. October 10, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson statedthat the Swedish police will not share preliminary investigation data with representatives of Russia or Gazprom, that caused outrage from the Russian Foreign Ministry and other officials.
At the time of publication of this analysis, the results of the investigation conducted by representatives of European countries had not been published. At the end of December 2022, The Washington Post, citing sources in diplomatic circles reported: no clear evidence was found that the sabotage was organized by Russia itself, so such accusations (and they began to be made almost immediately after the explosions) before the end of the investigation would have been hasty. At the beginning of February 2023, a similar assessment voiced German Prosecutor General Peter Frank. On February 21, US Ambassador to Moscow Lynn Tracy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, where they demanded that the American side “give an explanation” about the incident and “not interfere with an objective investigation to identify those responsible.”
February 8, 2023 American journalist Seymour Hersh published in his blog on the Substack platform, a material entitled “How did America destroy the Nord Stream gas pipeline?” In his text, Hersh claims that the sabotage was organized by US authorities and intelligence services in collaboration with Norwegian colleagues, planting explosives under the cover of NATO exercises in the summer of 2022. Although the author is laureate numerous journalistic awards (including the most prestigious, the Pulitzer, in 1970), in recent years he has several times published articles of clearly conspiracy theological content with a lot of inconsistencies (the most famous - that before his murder in 2011, Osama bin Laden allegedly spent five years in captivity of the Pakistani army under an agreement with the US authorities). Numerous errors found and in the text about the explosions at Nord Stream, but its main problem is that all Hersh’s statements are based on the words of one (!) anonymous source, allegedly “directly familiar with the planning of the operation.”
However, Hersh's statements in his statements began to lean Russian officials and pro-government media, as well as the authorities of some other countries (for example, China). In turn, the White House, shortly after the publication of the journalist’s blog named the text's contents are "totally false" and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described it as "nonsense".
We were unable to find any comments from the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, regarding Hersh’s conclusions. They are not on official website the European Commission (where, in particular, transcripts of the official’s statements are published), neither verified account on Twitter, which she uses quite actively. In general, on this social network von der Leyen wrote about the Nord Stream explosions twice: on September 27, the next day, told about negotiations with the Prime Minister of Denmark, called the incident sabotage and called for an investigation, and on October 3 published a tweet similar in content after a conversation with the head of the Norwegian cabinet.
The quote about the “impeccable reputation of the American state,” which was actively disseminated by Internet users, did not first appear in von der Leyen’s speech, her comments to the media or publications on social networks. The earliest mention of this phrase can be found in the Telegram channel “but my Yandex wallet” (18,800 subscribers), where the corresponding post was posted February 15 at 21:00 Moscow time. In larger channels, the quote began appearing early the next morning.
Regular readers of “Verified” (unlike, for example, bloggers Colonelcassad and Dmitry Vasilets) already know that the authors of the “but my Yandex wallet” channel are the creators of the most viral satirical news of recent months. Although the project is not as famous as, for example, “Panorama” (which is probably why some of its publications are taken seriously), posts from there regularly appear on major blogs precisely under the guise of real news. “Verified” analyzed, in particular, quotes from prime ministers invented by the authors of the channel “Here is my Yandex wallet.” Estonia And Poland. However, you can find out that the channel’s publications are satirical in nature by simply reading the blog description: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.”
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: European Parliament via Wikimedia Commons
Satirical news
- Is it true that 20 LNG plants have recently burned down in the US?
- Is it true that European countries, at the request of Ukraine, are identifying potential recruits among Ukrainian refugees?
- Is it true that legally Germany is still occupied by US troops?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
