RUMOURS are swirling over who was involved in the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Germany should “keep quiet” over the fate of a project that Poland always opposed.

Posting on X on Saturday, Mr Tusk wrote: “To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2, the only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet,” apparently in response to claims by a former head of German intelligence agency BND, August Hanning, that the spectacular act of sabotage must have had Polish support.

The September 2022 explosions destroyed the pipeline, which was built to supply Germany with Russian natural gas. The explosions released an estimated 478,000 tonnes of methane gas into the atmosphere and displaced an estimated 250,000 tonnes of seabed sediment, much of it toxic because the pipelines pass by a chemical munitions dump site near the Danish island of Bornholm.

The US initially claimed that Russia had destroyed its own pipeline, though no convincing motive was advanced and US President Joe Biden had previously threatened that Washington would “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2 should Russia invade Ukraine, which it did in February 2022.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who exposed the 1968 My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops, said last year that the CIA had conducted the operation with assistance from Norway, an allegation both deny. Last week, the Wall Street Journal claimed a rogue team of Ukrainians was responsible, and Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen following an investigation. 

Mr Tusk’s remarks will deepen speculation that such an attack could not have been carried out without a state actor.