Nord Stream Enigma Deepens as OSINT Analyst Finds Mystery Tanker Hung Around Explosion Site for Week

US and German media sought to turn the Nord Stream sabotage attacks into an open-and-shut whodunit detective novel this week by laying the blame at the feet of a “pro-Ukrainian group” with no links to any state. This information contradicts reporting by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, who fingered the US and Norwegian militaries for the crime.

A Greek-flagged tanker was spotted loitering around the site of the Nord Stream attacks for six days in September 2022, two weeks before the pipelines were blown up in a sabotage attack, a Denmark-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) analyst has discovered. Trawling through data from the Automatic Identification System, a database showing the locations of ships operating across the world’s seas and oceans, analyst Oliver Alexander found that the Minerva Julie, a 183-meter-long, 32-meter-wide Greek-flagged oil and chemical tanker, stopped and then idled in an area of the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm from September 6-13, before pressing east to Tallinn, Estonia, and then to St. Petersburg, Russia.

Alexander detailed the discovery in a Twitter thread in which he expressed skepticism about the New York Times report blaming a “pro-Ukrainian group” for sabotaging the pipelines. “Unfortunately, the new New York Times article doesn’t give any new actionable information that can be examined,” he wrote, suggesting that there wasn’t any “real substance in the article that brings us measurably closer to knowing the truth about what happened” because the entire story was based on claims by anonymous officials and intelligence sources.

Minerva Julie’s owners, Minerva Maritime, confirmed the oil tanker’s whereabouts after being reached out to by media, saying the ship was “drifting in the sea area northeast of Bornholm, Denmark between 6 September and 13 September 2022, while awaiting her next voyage instructions,” and that the tanker “departed the Port of Rotterdam on 2 September, after discharging her cargo. Once voyage orders were received, the vessel proceeded to her next port of call, Tallinn, Estonia.”

“Drifting in a sea area awaiting voyage orders is standard shipping procedure and there was nothing unusual in this instance,” the shipping company emphasized.

Alexander expressed skepticism over the company’s statement. “It just so happens to not only happen directly above the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage locations, but also at the exact same time as the currently suspected Andromeda [the rented yacht mentioned by US and German media in recent reports blaming a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ for the sabotage, ed.] is supposedly placing explosives in the same location,” he wrote.

The OSINT analyst’s followers offered constructive criticism of his observations, with one reader pointing out that “idling at sea waiting for instructions happens very often,” and that given the fact that the pipelines are sitting on top of major shipping routes, the Minerva Julie’s position may have just been a case of “wrong place, wrong time.” Others suggested that the evidence could be a “smoking gun,” but only if it was shown that the Minerva Julie was a specialized Dive Support Vessel, because “the mission required saturation divers and…very sophisticated chambers which house them on the seafloor.”

Others took issue with the OSINT examiner’s work, saying it “makes zero sense to use a ship that can be tracked by simple OSINT,” or even accusing him of coming up with “ridiculous fake stories” to “divert attention away from” Seymour Hersh’s bombshell reporting, which fingered US Navy divers said to have rigged the pipelines to blow under the cover of a NATO military exercise last summer, with the blasts triggered by a Norwegian aircraft flying overhead on September 26. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with over 60 years of investigative journalistic experience under his belt, said his information came from a source with “direct knowledge of the operational planning.”

Last month, Sputnik received information corroborating Hersh’s reporting from a source identifying themselves as a military serviceman who took part in the NATO drills.

Senior Russian officials have largely avoided addressing The New York Times and German media reports blaming the mystery “pro-Ukrainian group” for the Nord Stream attacks, instead repeating Moscow’s demands for a thorough and transparent investigation. But former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could not help but respond to the new claims, characterizing the Times’ report as a lackluster “Hollywood drama” featuring “mediocre actors, a director who’s no Quentin Tarantino, very poor casting and camera work, and a script that’s boring as s***.”