Warship Activities Jeopardize Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

The operator of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built on the Baltic Sea floor on Thursday complained that the transit of military equipment near the project area poses a risk to the engineering work.

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"Higher activity of naval vessels, airplanes, and helicopters and civilian vessels of foreign states is observed in the work area," Nord Stream 2 Director Andrei Minin said, commenting that their "actions are often clearly provocative."

On March 28, for example, an unidentified submarine passed within a nautical mile of Fortuna, an engineering vessel that carries out the pipeline route and whose anchor ropes extend beyond that distance.

The next day, a Polish Navy ship also performed maneuvers near Fortuna. To avoid possible dangers, the Russian company sent the maintenance ship Spasatel Karev to sail parallel to the Polish vessel.

Minin explained that those maneuvers could have damaged the entire anchor positioning system and pipeline. The realization of marine projects such as Nord Stream 2 presupposes the respect of a 1.5-mile safety zone into which vessels unrelated to the engineering work cannot enter.

Since that is not happening, he believes the incursions have been coordinated and planned to undermine the realization of the project.

In mid-March, the U.S. State Department warned companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that they risk sanctions unless they abandon their work immediately. The company KVT-RUS and its vessel Fortuna are on the U.S. sanctions list.