Sir, – There has been yet another story in The Irish Times devoted to the passage of two Russian commercial ships through the area of North Atlantic in the vicinity of Ireland (“Defence Forces scramble aircraft after Russian government ships spotted off west coast”, News, March 29th). The purpose of this story seems to be to once again create an impression of “suspicious” Russian maritime activity, allegedly aimed at sabotaging subsea communication cables. An attempt so obviously ill-conceived that a story itself concludes that there was nothing “sinister” in the manoeuvres of the ships, only the desire to avoid bad weather on their way to Africa.
The real threat to international maritime infrastructure lies elsewhere as evidenced by the terrorist attack last year on the “Nord Stream” 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The explosion of these pipelines in September of 2022 was an unprecedented act of sabotage which left Europe without one of the major and most dependable supply of natural gas. The obvious beneficiary has been the United States – economically by switching Europeans to more expensive liquefied natural gas from the US, politically by cutting one of the most reliable economic links between Europe and Russia, increasing Europe’s dependence on the US. There are serious grounds to believe that there has been US involvement in this act of sabotage despite persistent and unsubstantiated denials by the US officials. The recent revelations by Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer-winning US reporter, clearly support that point.
From the very day of this incident, Russia has been insisting on thorough international and independent investigation of the matter – only to face a wall of obstruction from the German, Swedish and Danish authorities, which, much in line with the US administration, seem very much bent on to cover up the story. Most recently, on March 27th, the issue has been raised at the United Nations Security Council, where the representative of the United States couldn’t explain the words of the US president Joe Biden, who is on record saying some time before the explosion that “We will put an end to the Nord Stream”.
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Abstention by the Western countries during the vote on the draft council’s resolution to set up special commission to investigate the incident has been very much revealing – why don’t they want to get to the bottom of the matter?
The answer is simple and troubling – the truth is too dangerous and could have catastrophic political consequences for the perpetrators of this act of international terrorism. – Yours, etc,
YURIY FILATOV,
Ambassador of Russia
to Ireland,
Dublin 14.