Czech President Petr Pavel said that attacking the Nord Stream pipelines would have been a “legitimate” target for Ukraine amid reports pointing the finger at Kyiv for the sabotage.
Pavel, who previously served as NATO chairman and before that at the head of the Czech Armed Forces, said that while he has no information to confirm reports that the Zelensky-led government in Ukraine was behind the September 2022 assault on the Russo-German Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, such an attack would have been justifiable in light of the Russian invasion months prior.
Speaking to the online news magazine Novinky on Wednesday, the Czech president said: “When an armed conflict is waged, it is waged not only against military targets, but also against strategic targets. And pipelines are a strategic target. If the attack was aimed at cutting off gas and oil supplies to Europe and back money to Russia, then—and I say conditional on purpose—it would be a legitimate target.”
Pavel also attempted to downplay the significance of the sabotage, claiming that Nord Stream was not “critical” for European energy security, saying: “It certainly brought some complications, but not those that we couldn’t deal with. Pipelines have always been and will always be targets, because they have the potential to influence the conflict in one direction or another.”
However, in a likely reference to Germany, the Czech leader noted that if it was proven that Kyiv was behind the sabotage of Nord Stream, it could “affect the willingness of countries to provide assistance to Ukraine.”
There have been growing demands within Germany for the leftist coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to punish Ukraine for allegedly orchestrating the attack on German infrastructure, with a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming that President Zelensky had initially signed off on the sabotage, and while he later backtracked, the attack was still carried out under the direction of his then-commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy.
The leader of the left-wing populist BSW party and member of the Bundestag, Sahra Wagenknecht, demanded last week that Germany immediately cut off military aid to Ukraine in light of allegations.
Wagenknecht also called for the formation of an investigatory committee in the German parliament to investigate if the Scholz government had any foreknowledge of the “terrorist attack on our energy supply.”
“If it turns out that German authorities knew about the attack plan in advance, then we would have a scandal of the century in German politics,” she said.
Alice Weidel, the leader of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), also called for aid payments from Berlin to be cut off and suggested that, if the allegations are true, Ukraine should be “billed” for the damage to the German economy.