UN Security Council Rejects an Investigation into Nordstream Pipeline Sabotage

29 March 2023

On 27 March the UN Security Council rejected a Russian motion to have a UN investigation into the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines on 22 September 2022.

Interestingly there were 3 votes in favour, Brazil, Russia and China and 12 Abstentions.  No votes against!  The abstentions were from the US, UK, France, Gabon, Switzerland, Ghana, Ecuador, Malta, Japan, Albania and the United Arab Emirates. The reason mostly given for the abstentions was that there are already investigations going on by Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

China’s representative pointed out that the UN investigation could encompass and cooperate with all these, and that blocking the Council from launching and investigation only raises suspicions that ‘something is being hidden’.  He tactfully did not say that any national investigation would have to be filtered through that country’s foreign policy considerations.

Of course, the elephant in the room was the report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.