, Columnist
We May Never Get the Truth About Nord Stream or a Covid Lab Leak
War and plague are ideal breeding grounds for unsolvable mysteries and conspiracy theories.
Not giving up its secrets.
Photographer: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
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The first casualty of war is truth, they say. I’d add that truth is equally moribund in a Cold War and a pandemic, or other calamities for which humans blame one another. These days, there are two mysteries of particular importance about which we may never know the truth.
One has to do with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and the wider confrontation between Moscow and the West. This is the question of who sabotaged — with four huge undersea detonations last September — the two Nord Stream pipelines meant to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany.