Berlin: The company that operates the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that is being built on the bottom of the Baltic Sea reported that provocative activities by warships, commercial ships, airplanes and a submarine put installation work at risk and could cause a breakdown in the infrastructure itself, according to the director of the company’s Nord Stream subsidiary, Andrei Minin.
This senior executive highlighted that an unidentified submarine passed on the surface less than a nautical mile from the Fortuna barge on March 28. That ship carries out the layout of the gas pipeline and its anchor ropes extend beyond that distance, with which the submersible could damage the entire anchor positioning system and damage the pipeline itself.
The following day, a combat ship of the Polish Navy with the tactical number 823 maneuvered alongside the same barge and, to avoid possible dangers, the Russian side had to send the maintenance ship Spasatel Kárev to the area, which sailed in parallel to the Polish ship.
In the early morning of March 30, two floating objects were located near the barge: one headed straight for the Fortuna, without responding to calls on the radio channels, so the sailors got in his way, turned on the projectors of on board and they discovered that it was a fishing vessel, which changed course without establishing radio contact; for its part, the other ship flew away undetected.
The realization of projects such as Nord Stream 2 implies the establishment of a safety zone of 1.5 miles to which vessels not related to the works cannot enter, Minin recalled.
According to Andrei Minin, the most dangerous incident, which anticipated the following, took place on February 22, when ships were laying the pipeline south of the Danish island of Bornholm: a Polish fishing vessel, later identified as SWI-106, entered the protected area and did not respond to radio communications on multiple occasions.
When the maintenance boat Vladislav Strizhov left to eject him from that area, the fishing boat rammed him and, only later, went online and took his blame for the accident. That maneuver prompted the Russian side to present a maritime protest note through the Russian Consulate in Germany.
The Polish anti-submarine aircraft PZL-Mielec ?-28?1 frequently approaches and flies low near the project barge and the environment in which it works, according to Minin at a press conference.
These provocations were obviously planned and prepared, both with the use of fishing boats and with warships, submarines and airplanes, in order to undermine the realization of the project, so Minin considers that it is the first case without precedent in history. of such coordinated behavior.
