Suggestions Poland helped Nord Stream sabotage are groundless, says presidential aide

WARSAW (Reuters) - Suggestions that Ukrainian authorities supported by Poland were behind planning and executing the sabotage attack on Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 are groundless, the Polish president's aide said on Sunday.

Germany's former intelligence chief August Hanning told Die Welt this week he believed there were agreements between presidents of Poland and Ukraine to carry out the attack.

"These are completely groundless insinuations," Mieszko Pawlak, head of the international policy bureau at the office of President Andrzej Duda said when asked about the allegations by Polsat broadcaster, PAP newswire reported.

Pawlak said Hanning was serving when Gerhard Schroeder was German chancellor and pillars of Nord Stream 1 were emerging, and "as head of intelligence definitely played a shameful and important role in the investment".

German media reported this week that German prosecutors had identified a Ukrainian diving instructor as a key suspect in the Nord Stream sabotage attack and issued a warrant to arrest him in Poland.

Poland received the warrant but the suspect has left the country as Germany failed to include his name in a database of wanted persons, Polish prosecutors told Reuters.

"To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X platform on Saturday.

Tusk did not directly address the allegations of Polish involvement.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that private businessmen funded the Nord Stream sabotage, overseen by a top general in Ukraine. Ukraine denies any involvement.

The pipeline to Germany under the Baltic Sea was the main route for Russian gas flows before the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Marek Strzelecki, editing by Ed Osmond)