Seven months after explosions severed three of Russia’s four Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, German investigators are now pursuing leads that point to Ukraine as the responsible country. At the same time, a multinational consortium of European investigative journalists has also found leads pointing to Kiev. 

A long-running Western propaganda campaign — abetted by media that’s credulous at best and complicit at worst — would have us believe Russia blew up pipelines that took the country 15 years of construction — and painstaking diplomacy to overcome U.S. interference — to bring to reality.

According to The Times of London, Germany’s Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) has investigated Russian naval movements that have been declared “suspicious,” but found nothing that suggests Moscow is responsible for the attack.

New BBC Report Insinuates Russia Blew Up Nord Stream Pipeline

Rather, BKA investigators are now focusing on a yacht that sailed from the German port of Rostock weeks before the explosions. That 15-meter yacht — the Andromeda — was hired from a Polish company, and docked at a tiny Danish island near the blast site. Most strikingly, investigators found traces of “military-grade and underwater-deployable” explosives on the vessel. 

Given the complexity of the operation, the BKA believes a government must have backed the undertaking, and has found evidence pointing to Ukraine, via a shell company — a travel agency — formed by two Ukrainians in Warsaw. According to the team of journalists, the purported travel agency is one of more than 100 entities listed at a single address. In 2022, the travel agency, which had a Ukrainian woman named as president, received about $3 million for no documented reason. 

According to the BKA’s working theory, five men and one woman with forged Romanian and Bulgarian passportsentered Germany before using the yacht as a base for expert divers who planted the charges more than 200 feet below the sea. Germans have identified two other people — Ukrainians — who were aboard the vessel. Journalists say one of them is a Ukraine infantry veteran.  

It’s an intriguingly detailed scenario — and quite different from Seymour Hersh’s own blockbuster account. Citing unnamed national security sources, the legendary investigative journalist reported in February that the United States blew up the pipeline, in a plan crafted by the CIA with the cooperation of Norway and executed by US Navy divers deploying from a Norwegian mine-hunting vessel.   

Meanwhile, Hersh has just reported that Ukraine’s neighbor’s are quietly pressuring President Zelensky to find a way to bring the 15-month-old war to an end — with some apparently willing to compensate him personally for doing so.

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

In an unusual attempt at public outreach ‘spy-style’, the world’s most powerful intelligence organization is openly encouraging Russians to spy on their own country. 

The CIA released a nearly 2-minute video Monday on its official YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram channels. The Russian-language, professionally produced video urges individual Russians to provide intelligence on their country in the midst of the Ukraine war. Watch:

The video has a ‘patriotic’ orientation, assuring Russians they can do something to improve their country and its situation by handing over intelligence to the CIA. 

“The CIA wants to know the truth about Russia, and we are looking for reliable people who can tell us that truth,” the agency said in the video, according to a translation. “Your information may be more valuable than you know.”

The text on the screen of the clip further tells Russians to “Contact us. Perhaps the people around you don’t want to hear the truth. We want to.”

Some of the narration includes the following messaging, according to a description:

In the video – published on the CIA’s official YouTube channel and the Telegram messaging app, popular in Russia – a male voice reflects on the meaning of heroism and endurance as lone individuals are seen weighing their decisions: a man trudging through snow, a woman staring through a window.

“We are easily swayed by lies. But we do know what our reality is. The reality we live in. And the reality we talk about in whispers,” the voice says.

At the end, a man and a woman are shown in separate scenes with their fingers hovering over mobile phone screens with a link saying “Contact CIA”.

“This is my Russia. This will always be my Russia. I will endure. My family will endure. We will live with dignity because of my actions,” the narrator concludes.

The video at the end informs viewers how to submit information with a Tor browser utilizing the dark web and suggests tools for encrypted communications. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a daily briefing was asked about the CIA’s asset recruitment efforts. He responded, “I am convinced that our special services are monitoring this space in the necessary way.”

He added: “We all know perfectly well that the CIA and other Western intelligence services are not reducing their activity on the territory of our country.” 

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which serves as the country’s domestic intelligence service, has classified the AfD party youth wing, Junge Alternative (JA), as a “certain right-wing extremist endeavor.” The new designation not only creates the conditions for increased monitoring and enforcement action against JA, it also comes as a political hit to the parent AfD party at a time when it has seen a surge in popularity.

The BfV had already listed the AfD youth group as a “suspected case” in 2019, and the agency is now allowed to use all intelligence tools to monitor the JA after its new designation. In addition to the use of so-called confidential informants, this will include telephone tapping and covert observation, according to German newspaper Die Welt.

The BfV justified its step, among other things, with the concept of how the organization allegedly views the German people. The BfV argues that JA’s view is not compatible with the country’s constitution, also known as the Basic Law.

It is unclear what specific comments the BfV is referring to, but it has long been reported, including in mainstream media outlets, that foreigners, particularly from Middle Eastern and African countries, feature extremely high crime rates, especially for serious crimes like murder, assault, robbery, and rape. Furthermore, German officials themselves have pointed to foreigners from these countries as being responsible for the dramatic increase in child marriage and female genital mutilation. In other areas, like anti-Semitism, the predominant groups involved all hail from the Middle East. 

The BfV also claims that the AfD has repeatedly expressed itself in an anti-democratic manner. The agency claims members of the JA denigrate “political opponents, but also the state and its representatives per se.” This allegedly indicates that the Young Alternative is not concerned with democratic discourse, “but with a general disparagement of the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

According to the government’s own data, the AfD is the most attacked party in Germany. Its members have been subject to numerous arson attacks, and much of the political establishment — both the left and the center-right — have called for the party’s complete ban. The party has also been effectively banned from the country’s political talk shows on the ARD and ZDF channels, which are required to air a plurality of views reflecting the German public, due to their status as publically funded.

The federal executive committee of the Junge Alternative downplayed the BfV’s announcement.

“The classification of the so-called constitutional protection does not surprise us,” the board of the party youth branch announced.

The statement outlined that the country’s secret services are simply fulfilling their mission of suppressing the country’s opposition. 

“Regardless of whether they are critics of migration, critics of coronavirus measures or advocates of peace — every form of authentic opposition in this country is systematically stigmatized by this authority,” the board of the JA warned. Now, the JA is reviewing its legal options in light of the designation.

AfD leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel also released a joint statement, writing: “We currently have neither a justification nor relevant documents that make the step comprehensible.” 

The AfD is facing various legal disputes that could end up with the party being slapped by the BfV with a similar “right-wing extremist” designation. The party suspects that the BfV made the move against the JA to strengthen its case against the AfD. If the AfD receives such a designation, it could pave the way for a complete ban of the party in Germany.

There is also the suspicion that the BfV is using the new classification of the JA to influence legal disputes with the AfD.

In January, the AfD appealed to the Higher Administrative Court in Münster to overturn the BfV’s classification of the party, its youth organization and the dissolved party branch “Der Flügel” as suspected right-wing extremists.

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), known for writing for Antifa Magazine and her claims that the right poses the biggest threat to Germany, praised BfV for classifying the party as a right-wing extremist group.

“We are a strong and resilient democracy. We are very resolute in defending ourselves against racism and other forms of inhumanity,” she said on Wednesday. “We are doing everything we can to dry up the breeding ground for right-wing extremist violence.”

This post was originally published at Remix News