15 Aug, 2024 15:08
Zelensky's top aide denies Kiev's involvement in Nord Stream attack
The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the Ukrainian leader initially approved the plan to blow up key pipelines

Kiev had nothing to do with the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, Mikhail Podoliak, the top adviser to Ukrainian leader, Vladimir Zelensky, has said.

Podoliak made the statement to Reuters on Thursday in response to a report by the Wall Street Journal, claiming that Zelensky had initially authorized operation. The September 2022 attack ruptured the key energy infrastructure, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe.

According to the US outlet's sources, which included officers allegedly involved in the operation, Zelensky initially approved the attack on Nord Stream. He later tried to call it off , following pressure from the CIA, but then-Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny told him it could not be done as the sabotage group had already been dispatched and there was no way to contact it.

"Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources... and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia," Podoliak told the agency.

Russia has ridiculed claims that it would destroy its own pipelines, which provided it with steady revenue. Top officials in Moscow, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at Washington, arguing that it stood to gain the most from the disruption of Russian gas supplies to the EU.

"Ukraine has nothing to do with the Nord Stream explosions," Podolyak insisted, adding that Kiev did not gain any strategic or tactical advantage from the sabotage.

The report by the WSJ claimed that "a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen" came up with the idea of blowing up the pipelines during a drinking party in May 2022, a few months after the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The plotters believed that it would reduce Russia's energy profits and make the EU less dependent on Moscow, it said.

Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, told the outlet that claims of his - or Kiev's - involvement in the destruction of Nord Stream were a "mere provocation." A senior official in the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, also denied the report, insisting that Zelensky in particular "did not approve the implementation of any such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue relevant orders."

The WSJ said its reporting is partially corroborated by the findings of the German police investigation into the Nord Stream explosions. The German Federal Public Prosecutor issued a first arrest warrant in connection with the sabotage this week, according to local reports. The suspect is believed to be a Ukrainian citizen identified as 'Vladimir Z'.

The newspaper suggested that the police investigation could "upend" relations between Kiev and Berlin, which has been Ukraine's biggest backer in the EU amid the conflict with Russia.

15 Aug, 2024 16:47
Poland probably involved in Nord Stream blasts - ex-German spymaster
August Hanning has claimed that there appears to have been a secret arrangement between Kiev and Warsaw

Poland was likely involved in the underwater explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, the former president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency has claimed. August Hanning also alleged that Warsaw has intentionally obstructed Berlin's investigation into the incident.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the blasts, which brought an end to the supply of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 and damaged the parallel Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which had never entered operation due to EU bureaucratic setbacks.

In an interview with Die Welt on Thursday, Hanning said: "The way it seems is that it was a Ukrainian team that, as per the findings of the investigation, operated there." However, he added, "this was of course only possible with support from the land."

"When we look at the map... pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged here, and I think not only agencies ...I think that this was an arrangement between [people] at the top level in Ukraine and in Poland," the former intelligence chief conjectured.

He alleged that Warsaw might have provided logistical support to the suspected Ukrainian saboteurs.

According to Hanning, "these are decisions that were made at the highest political level. And I think that there was an arrangement between [Ukrainian] President [Vladimir] Zelensky and [Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda to carry out this attack."

He claimed that Polish authorities let one of the suspects leave the country even though Germany had already reached out to Warsaw, requesting assistance in his capture.

Warsaw "didn't exactly promote the probe. On the contrary, crucial findings were withheld, as I have heard from investigative circles," Hanning told Die Welt.

"In short, Poland had no interest in the success of the investigation, and this is of course due to [the fact] that Poland was massively involved in the preparation of this attack," the former senior intelligence official claimed.

He concluded that such attacks do not happen without massive state involvement, going so far as to allege that the "Polish and... the Ukrainian military played a big role, and intelligence services as well."

On Wednesday, German state broadcaster ARD, along with the Suddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit newspapers reported that Poland, despite EU inter-state regulations, has failed to respond to Berlin's request for cooperation after Federal Public Prosecutor Jens Rommel in June issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national identified as "Vladimir Z". The suspect is reportedly a diving instructor who lived in Poland and had allegedly placed the explosive devices on the pipeline.

Polish prosecutors confirmed that they had received the arrest warrant, but argued that the man was not detained as he had left the country by crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border, Reuters cited.

Kiev officials have publicly denied any involvement in the destruction of the pipelines.

The extent of the damage is so far illustrated by three private dives in the Swedish EEZ, while government investigations are subject to secrecy. On Oct. 18, 2022, footage published by the Swedish daily Expressen shows a destroyed section of Nordstream 1 at a depth of 76 meters, with a length of at least 50 meters, taken by an underwater drone from BlueEye Robotics on behalf of the newspaper. On November 2, 2022, Nord Stream AG reports that the company also "completed initial data gathering at the location of the pipeline damage on Line 1 in the Swedish exclusive economic zone... According to preliminary results of the damage site inspection, technogenic craters with a depth of 3-5 meters were found on the seabed at a distance of about 248 m from each other. The section of the pipe between the craters is destroyed, the radius of pipe fragments dispersion is at least 250 meters." And finally, on November 30, it became known that Greenpeace had investigated the environmental damage with a diving robot. In doing so, the NGO was surprised to find that, despite the damage along a 250-meter length, only a few pieces of debris could be seen. However, it is likely that pieces may have been removed during the preceding governmental investigations, which are subject to secrecy.
[...]
Conclusion

In summary, it is generally assumed that a state actor was the perpetrator. Through Björn Lund we know that there were three blasts detected by the seismic networks. One southeast of Bornholm and two northeast of Bornholm. But there were four (1+3) leaks detected by the Naval Administrations. The location of the three leaks northeast of Bornholm has a peculiarity: they form the termination of the parallel pipeline in deep waters.

The different radii of the gas plumes indicate that different quantities of explosives were used - or - that the explosives were positioned differently close to the pipelines. In any case, the fact that only one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipes was blasted makes one wonder. More specifically, it raises three questions: Was a technique used that did not allow for precise placement, was there sloppiness because of hurry, or was Nord Stream 2 intentionally spared?

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