Sweden Abruptly Ends Joint Nord Stream Probe Citing 'National Security,' Refuses to Share Findings

Sweden rejected the idea of sharing its findings from the investigation into the incidents on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines with Germany and Denmark, referring to its high security classification level, Der Spiegel reported on Friday citing sources.

The weekly said that Sweden declined to establish an international joint investigation team to look into the incidents on the Nord Stream system. According to the magazine, Sweden justified its refusal by claiming "the confidentiality level of the results of its investigation was too high to share them with other states."

However, as Der Spiegel points out, Sweden had not initially commented on the issue. Speaking about Sweden’s refusal, Berlin said that it still hopes for cooperation with local authorities. Primarily, the German investigators need to assess images of the German army’s Sea Cat underwater drone, which reportedly shows a larger crater, indicating a powerful explosion.

Moreover, most of the pipeline had been smashed and the current might have washed some parts of the pipe away after the incident. The weekly says that the German authorities believe after conducting an initial analysis that an explosive device equivalent to 500 kilos of TNT might have been used for the blast.

Earlier in the day, Germany’s ARD television channel reported citing sources in the German government that Germany, Sweden and Denmark gave up plans to jointly investigate the sabotage at the Nord Stream pipelines and will do it separately instead. A German Interior Ministry spokesperson told reporters that the German Federal Police had completed investigative activities on the scene.

The ministry said it “expressed bewilderment” over the lack of an official response to a request from Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to involve Russian energy giant Gazprom and “representatives of the competent departments” from Russia in the investigation conducted by Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm.

The envoys were told that if Russian experts are not involved “Moscow will proceed from the fact that the named countries have something to hide or they are covering for the perpetrators of these terrorist acts”, the ministry said.

It added that Russia will not recognise any “pseudo-results” of an investigation without its experts.