The explosion of a section of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in September 2022, was planned by a group of senior Ukrainian officials and businessmen, going against the orders of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the CIA. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) writes this in a reconstruction of what it defines as “one of the most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history”. Behind the plan, according to several sources, among some of the participants, there was the then commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valeri Zaluzhny removed from his post this year and now ambassador to London.
According to the WSJ, the operation cost about $300,000 and 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 pleasure cruise. “It always makes me laugh when I read the media speculation about some big operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” an official involved in the plot told the American newspaper. “It all started with a night of heavy drinking and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the courage to risk their lives for their country.”
Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to an official who participated and three people familiar with the matter. But later, when the CIA learned of it and asked the Ukrainian president to back out, the Kiev leader ordered it not to proceed. Still, Zaluzhny, who was leading the operation, went ahead and brought in special forces officers who had experience organizing “secret, risky missions” against Russia. Zaluzhny said he knew nothing about the operation and that any suggestion to the contrary was “mere provocation.” The Journal said the deal, struck in May 2022 between Ukrainian businessmen and military officials, stipulated that the former would finance and help implement the project because the military was underfunded and increasingly reliant on support from abroad.
The Journal spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. Parts of their account were corroborated by a German police investigation nearly two years into the attack and obtained evidence including email, cellphone and satellite phone communications, as well as fingerprints and DNA samples from the alleged sabotage team. The German investigation did not directly link President Zelensky to the clandestine operation.
Yesterday, it became known that a European arrest warrant had been issued in Germany against a Ukrainian citizen accused of being one of the perpetrators of the sabotage of a gas pipeline with which Russia was aiming to increase its gas supplies to Western Europe. The suspect – Volodymyr Z. – was last seen in Poland, but has since disappeared.