The Wall Street Journal claims that Ukrainians were behind the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion, following an order passed by President Zelenskyy, who unsuccessfully tried to revoke it at the request of the CIA. An adviser to the Ukrainian president denied the reports, claiming that Russia was behind the attack.
The US daily cited four senior Ukrainian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to the WSJ, in May 2022, a handful of high-ranking Ukrainian military officers and businessmen gathered to celebrate their country’s success in fending off a Russian invasion. Under the influence of alcohol and in a patriotic ecstasy, someone suggested the next radical step: destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Just over four months later, in the early hours of the morning of September 26, Scandinavian seismologists received signals indicating an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, near the Danish island of Bornholm. They were caused by three powerful explosions and the largest release of natural gas in history, equivalent to Denmark’s annual CO2 emissions.
The course of the operation
According to the WSJ, the Ukrainian operation cost about PLN 300,000. dollars. It involved a small chartered yacht with a crew of six, including trained civilian divers. One of them was a woman whose presence helped create the illusion that it was a group of friends on a nice cruise.
In September 2022, the perpetrators rented a 15-meter recreational yacht called the Andromeda from the German Baltic port of Rostock. According to Ukrainian officials and people familiar with the German investigation, the boat was rented with the help of a Polish travel agency that was set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a front for financial transactions almost 10 years ago.
Armed only with diving gear, satellite navigation, portable sonar and seafloor maps showing the pipeline’s location, the crew set out. According to people familiar with the German investigation, the four divers worked in pairs. Operating in dark, frigid waters, they used octogen, a powerful explosive also known as HMX, which was connected to time-controlled detonators. A small amount of the light explosive was enough to rupture the high-pressure pipes.
Wanting to leave Germany quickly, the sabotage group neglected to wash the Andromeda, which allowed German detectives to find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples of the crew.
At one point, they failed to cooperate with the Polish authorities; however, the saboteurs partly used Poland as a logistics base and stopped at the Polish port of Kołobrzeg.
A port official who found the yacht’s crew suspicious alerted police. The Polish border guard checked the identities of the crew members, who presented passports of European Union members. People familiar with the investigation say they were allowed to continue sailing north, where they laid the rest of the mines.
The entire port was under extensive video surveillance. However, despite a history of close cooperation between Warsaw and Berlin on law enforcement matters, Polish authorities refused to hand over the port surveillance footage. They then told their German counterparts that the footage was routinely destroyed shortly after Andromeda’s departure.
The Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) told the WSJ that no such recordings exist.
Zelensky and CIA involvement
As the WSJ reported, President Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to one of the officers involved in it and three people familiar with it. But later, when the CIA became aware of the plan and asked the Ukrainian president to stop the operation, he ordered it to be halted.
Zelensky’s commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, who led the operation, continued the operations. The newspaper spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who participated in the plan or had direct knowledge of it. All concluded that the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia.
A multi-year investigation
“The Journal notes that parts of his account were corroborated by a nearly two-year German police investigation into the attack, which yielded evidence including emails, cellphone and satellite data, as well as fingerprints and DNA samples from members of the alleged sabotage band. The German investigation did not directly link President Zelensky to the covert operation.
Załużny, currently Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, told the newspaper he knew nothing about such an operation and that any suggestion otherwise would be “pure provocation”. The Ukrainian military, he added, was not authorised to carry out foreign missions and therefore could not be involved in them.
The Ukrainians’ response
Mykhailo Podolak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, has denied Ukraine’s involvement in the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Reuters reported on Thursday. At the same time, he said Russia was behind the attacks that took place in September 2022.
Such an act can only be carried out by someone who has significant technical and financial resources. And who had all this during the attacks (on Nord Stream)? Only Russia
– Zelensky’s adviser said in a comment to Reuters.
Ukraine has nothing to do with these explosions
— he stressed and added that Ukraine did not gain any strategic or tactical advantage in connection with the attacks on the Russian gas pipeline.
Arrest warrants
“Die Zeit”, ARD and “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” reported on Wednesday that the German public prosecutor’s office has obtained the first arrest warrant in the case of attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Polish prosecutors said on Wednesday that Poland had received a European arrest warrant issued by Berlin in connection with the attack, but the suspect, Ukrainian national Volodymyr Z., had already left Poland. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Russia has blamed the United States, Britain and Ukraine for the explosions, which largely cut off Russian gas from the lucrative European market. Those countries have denied involvement.
Germany, Denmark and Sweden are investigating the incident. During their investigation, the Swedes found traces of explosives on several items collected from the blast site, confirming that the explosions were deliberate.
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hum/PAP/WSJ/Reuters
