Translated material
WSJ: Zelensky personally approved the plan to blow up Nord Stream, but later tried to cancel the operation
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally approved the plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Wall Street Journal reported , citing its sources.
At the same time, shortly before the sabotage was carried out, the CIA learned about it, so the Ukrainian president tried to cancel it. He gave the order to suspend the operation to Valeriy Zaluzhny, who then held the post of commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but he did not listen, writes WSJ . In a conversation with the newspaper, Zaluzhny said that he knew nothing about the operation, and called the assumption about Ukraine's connection with the explosion of the gas pipeline "a simple provocation."
The idea of blowing up Nord Stream arose during an informal meeting of high-ranking Ukrainian military and businessmen in May 2022. As WSJ writes, citing participants in the operation, its cost was about 300 thousand dollars - this money was transferred by Ukrainian businessmen.
“I always laugh when I read in the media about some grand operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites… All this was born as a result of a night of drinking and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the courage to risk their lives for their country,” the newspaper’s source said.
The explosion involved a team of six people, including civilian divers, who rented the yacht Andromeda. Among them was a female diver, which made it appear that the group was just a group of friends on a cruise.
The destruction of three Nord Stream pipelines in the territorial waters of Denmark and Sweden became known in September 2022. In November 2023, the Washington Post and Spiegel wrote that the explosion was coordinated by Ukrainian Colonel Roman Chervinsky, and that he had six people under his command who, using forged documents, rented a yacht and, using deep-sea equipment, installed explosives on the gas pipeline.
Yesterday, the German prosecutor's office issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver suspected of involvement in the gas pipeline explosion. According to German publications, the Ukrainian's name is Vladimir Z. He had recently been living in Poland, but his current whereabouts are unknown. The investigation claims that the diving instructor had two accomplices, Yevgeny U. and his wife Svetlana, who attached explosives to the gas pipeline.
As reported by Zeit , Suddeutsche Zeitung and ARD , the yacht left the German port of Rostock in September 2022. It made several stops in Denmark, Sweden and Poland before returning to port. At some point along the way, divers dove to the seabed and attached explosive devices with timers to the pipelines. Remains of an explosive called octogen were later found on the Andromeda.