Branko Marcetic, a staff writer for Jacobin magazine, pointed out in an April 21 article for the Responsible Statecraft website that other stories — including one published on March 7 by The New York Times that suggested a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the explosions — do not carry similar warnings by Facebook, nor do accounts that allege Russia was behind the pipelines’ destruction.
“This is despite the fact that such accusations clash with the now-official narrative of a pro-Ukrainian, nonstate group, and that even Western officials now openly doubt Russia’s culpability for attacking its own pipeline, which could cost half a billion dollars to repair by one estimate,” Marcetic wrote.
Russian website RT.com tweeted on April 21, “The notoriously ‘impartial’ Facebook red flags Seymour Hersh’s reporting on Nord Stream sabotage as ‘false’ citing counterclaims by ‘independent fact-checkers’ from Norway and Ukraine.”
George Beebe, a former CIA officer and now head of the Quincy Institute’s Grand Strategy program told Responsible Statecraft: “The Biden administration seems to be recognizing that the story of the Russians blowing up their own pipeline wasn’t holding any water.
“This doesn’t mean (that The New York Times story) is wrong, but it sure does raise questions in my mind as to what is going on here,” Beebe said. “They didn’t show any evidence to The New York Times reporters, they simply said, ‘We have this new intelligence. Trust us.'”
