The Wall Street Journal published this Thursday an exclusive information on how the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelinebetween Russia and Germany in September 2022, which claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan but then unsuccessfully attempted to cancel it.
The report entitled “A drunken night on a rented yacht: the true story of the sabotage of the oil pipeline Nord Stream”The report comes a day after it became known that Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen living in Poland for his alleged involvement in sabotage of a pipeline through which Russia transports gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea.
According to the WSJ, this attack, which it defines as one of the “most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history”, was planned at a meeting of “a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen” to “toast their country’s remarkable success in stopping the Russian invasion” of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Fueled by alcohol and patriotic fervor, someone suggested a radical next step: destroy the Nord Stream”The report says, recalling that there was speculation that the US intelligence service, the theory defended by Russia, or even the Russian president himself, Vladimir Putin, were behind the explosion of the gas pipeline using three underwater explosions.
The “true story,” according to the WSJ, is that private businessmen financed the operation carried out by a group of six people sailing aboard the Andromeda, a 15-meter pleasure yacht they had rented in Germany. Among them were four civilian divers and a woman, “whose presence helped create the illusion that they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise,” the report says.
/
The plan cost around $300,000 and was overseen by an acting general. with experience in special operations who reported to the then-commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, according to the WSJ investigation, which spoke with one of the participants and three other people familiar with the operation, among other sources.
“The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation, US officials said. The Ukrainian president then ordered Zaluzhniy to stop her, according to Ukrainian officials and officers familiar with the conversation, as well as Western intelligence officials. But the general ignored the order and his team modified the original plan, these people said.
He Wall Street Journal He said that he exchanged messages with Zaluzhniy, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, and also spoke to a senior official in the Ukrainian intelligence service (SBU) to corroborate the information. Both denied the veracity of the information.
Zelensky “did not approve the implementation of such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue any relevant orders,” the Ukrainian intelligence source consulted by the WSJ stressed.
The newspaper said that the account given by the participants in the sabotage was partly corroborated by a nearly two-year German police investigation, which – it said – did not “directly link President Zelensky to the clandestine operation.”
The WSJ identifies one of those recruited for the operation as Roman Chervinsky, a decorated colonel who previously served in Ukraine’s main security and intelligence service, the SBU, and is currently on trial in Ukraine on unrelated charges.
In July, the paper adds, he was released on bail after more than a year in detention and when contacted he declined to comment on the Nord Stream case, saying he was not authorized.
In addition to what was published today by the American newspaper, this Wednesday the results of an investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream carried out by the German public television channel ARD, the newspaper ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and the weekly ‘Die Zeit’.
According to this research, Germany has issued a warrant for the arrest of a diving instructor identified as “Vladimir S.”, but the order has not been executed by Poland, although Warsaw and Berlin are debating the future of the suspected subject.
“Vladimir S.” and two other Ukrainian citizens, managers of a diving school and identified as “Ewgen U.” and “his wife Svetlana,” are the alleged perpetrators of the sabotage, according to the investigation by these media.