On Thursday, NATO leaders publicly blamed "deliberate, careless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage" for the leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline networks.
They promised "a unified and firm response" to any allied infrastructure by a state or non-state actor, without identifying a suspect.
The extent of the pipeline system's damage seems to be more than first thought. The Swedish Coast Guard alerted the public on Thursday to a fourth leak in Sweden's EEZ that was close to a previously reported one. It was unclear right first whether the breakage of all four pipelines in the Nord Stream network had now been confirmed.
(Nord Stream 1 and 2 consist of two parallel pipes each, for a total of four.)
German security sources, according to Der Spiegel, think that explosive charges with the equivalent force of around 500 kilograms of TNT were responsible for the damage. The strongest blast's strength was assessed by Sweden's National Seismic Network to be between 100 and 200 kilograms. This network used seismic monitoring technology to discover the explosions.
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