The media arm of the China Communist Party (CCP) is searching for the “truth” about the Nord Stream pipeline one year after it exploded. .Xinhua News highlighted that the truth about what happened is “unclear one year on” and asserts the West is delaying investigation into the matter “lest they discover their allies were responsible.” .The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which transported natural gas from Russia to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea, exploded first southeast of Bornholm, a Danish island, and then again northeast of the land mass on September 26, 2022. .The second explosion was registered as equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. .“Investigation of the bombing [of] Nord Stream pipelines has been dragged for one year without substantive results,” Xinhua News wrote. “Western officials would rather not know who bombed the Nord Stream pipelines, lest they discover that their allies were responsible.”.The twin pipelines formerly served Europe with energy once the natural gas arrived in Germany and was “critical to Europe's energy security,” with the European Union importing 33% (59.2 billion cubic metres) of its natural gas through the pipelines from Russia in 2021..Sweden, Denmark and Germany have been heading up the investigation into the explosion ever since — after having excluded Russia from joining the investigation. .In February 2023, representatives from the three nations told the United Nations Security Council in a joint letter “investigations have not yet been concluded.”.“At this point,” they said, “it is not possible to say when they will be concluded.”.Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed Sweden, Denmark and Germany delayed the investigation on purpose and slammed the three countries for refusing to engage with Russia on the investigation. .In July, Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, told the Security Council the delay could impact the findings on who is responsible. .“The longer the delay, the more difficult it will be to collect evidence and find the truth, the more doubts and speculations will occur and the less credible the results of the investigations will be," Shuang said. .He asked for nations to avoid politicizing the investigations and called for “an early release of the results of a country-specific investigation,” as per Xinhua News..Mats Ljungqvist, Swedish prosecutor in charge of the Nord Stream investigation, said in April the “absolute main scenario” was a state actor "directly or at least indirectly behind all this.” .Ljungqvist did not specify a particular country in his statement. .China asserts European states took “caution” in announcing who blew up the pipeline “is probably a result of the politically sensitive and inconvenient truth.”.The article references a piece by the Washington Post from April, which quotes a “senior European diplomat.”.“Leaders see little benefit from digging too deeply and finding an uncomfortable answer," the diplomat allegedly said, stating officials "would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or its allies were involved."
