Human-caused damage suspected at gas pipeline
MOSCOW – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich lost an appeal Tuesday to be released from jail on espionage charges, meaning he will remain behind bars at least through Nov. 30.
Gershkovich, 31, had a mostly blank expression as he appeared in the defendant’s glass cage in Moscow City Court in blue shirt, T-shirt and jeans. He marked six months in custody on Sept. 29.
It was the second time in less than a month he had appeared before a judge to appeal a decision to extend his pre-trial detention through November. On Sept. 19, the court declined to hear the appeal, citing unspecified procedural violations.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” that Gershkovich’s appeal was rejected, adding: “Evan should be released.”
The journalist was detained in March while on a reporting trip to the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,200 miles east of Moscow.
The court proceedings are closed because prosecutors say details of the criminal case are classified.
Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.”
Gershkovich and the Journal deny the allegations, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained. Russian authorities haven’t detailed any evidence to support the espionage charges.
He is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, notorious for its harsh conditions.
SEOUL, South Korea – South Korea’s defense minister said Tuesday he would push to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement in order to resume front-line surveillance on rival North Korea, as the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas militants raised concerns in South Korea about similar assaults by the North.
The agreement, reached during a brief period of diplomacy between South Korea’s former liberal President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, created buffer zones along land and sea boundaries and no-fly zones above the border to prevent clashes.
Talking with reporters in Seoul, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-shik cited the violence in Israel and Gaza to stress the need to strengthen monitoring on the North. Shin was appointed by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday.
Shin was particularly critical of the inter-Korean agreement’s no-fly zones, which he said prevents South Korea from fully utilizing its air surveillance assets at a time when North Korean nuclear threats are growing.
Relations between the Koreas have decayed following the collapse of larger talks between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019 over the North’s nuclear weapons program.
HELSINKI – Damage to an undersea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia appears to have been caused by “external activity,” Finnish officials said Tuesday, adding that authorities were investigating.
Finnish and Estonian gas system operators said Sunday they noted an unusual drop in pressure in the Balticconnector pipeline, after which they shut down the gas flow.
The Finnish government on Tuesday said both the gas pipeline and to a telecommunications cable between the two NATO countries were damaged.
Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo stopped short of calling the pipeline
North Korea has threatened to abandon the 2018 agreement while dialing up missile tests to a record pace, prompting the conservative Yoon to take a harder line on Pyongyang than his dovish predecessor.
While it would take a complicated legal process for South Korea to fully abandon the agreement, pausing the agreement would only require a decision from a Cabinet meeting, Shin said.
“Hamas has attacked Israel, and the Republic of Korea is under a much stronger threat,” Shin said, invoking South Korea’s formal name. leak sabotage but said it could not have been caused by regular operations.
“According to a preliminary assessment, the observed damage could not have occurred as a result of normal use of the pipe or pressure fluctuations. It is likely that the damage is the result of external activity,” Orpo said.
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation was leading an inquiry into the leak, Orpo said, adding that the leak occurred in Finland’s economic zone. According to Estonian authorities, the damaged area of the data cable owned by the Finnish mobile operator and internet service provider Elisa is likely located in Estonia’s economic zone, and Estonia’s military was investigating.
In the Estonian capital, Tallinn, Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told reporters Estonian authorities received photos confirming that the damage in
“To counter (that threat), we need to be observing (North Korean military movements) with our surveillance assets, to gain prior knowledge of whether they are preparing provocations or not. If Israel had flown aircraft and drones to maintain continuous monitoring, I think they might have not been hit like that,” he said.
Shin’s comments are likely to draw fierce criticism from South Korea’s liberal opposition, which has described the agreement as a safety valve between the Koreas as relations continue to worsen.
Recent commercial satellite photos show a sharp increase in rail traffic along the North Korea-Russia border, indicating the North is supplying munitions to Russia to fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, Beyond Parallel, a website run by the Washingtonbased Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a report last week.
Speculation about a possible North Korean plan to refill Russia’s munition stores drained in its protracted war with Ukraine flared last month, when Kim traveled to Russia to meet Putin and visit key military sites.
North Korea is expected to make its third attempt to launch a military spy satellite this month following consecutive failures in recent months, as Kim stresses the importance of acquiring space-based reconnaissance capacities to monitor U.S. and South Korean military movements and enhance the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. the Balticconnector is “mechanical” and “human-made.”
“This damage must have been caused by some force that was not created by … a diver or a small underwater robot; the damage is more massive,” Pevkur said, adding that seismologists have previously stated there was no explosion at the incident site.
Heidi Soosalu, seismologist at the Estonian Geological Service, told the Estonian public broadcaster ERR on Tuesday that neither Estonian nor Finnish seismic stations registered anything resembling explosions during the time period the Balticconnector developed a suspected leak.
The incident comes just over a year after the Nord Stream gas pipelines running between Germany and Russia in the Baltic Sea were damaged by explosions believed to be sabotage.