For the first time, the main features of the Nord Stream sabotage were recounted by witnesses and reported by the Wall Street Journal in the latest article.
Accordingly, in May 2022, a group of high-ranking Ukrainian military officers and businessmen gathered in a bar to celebrate the achievements in the ongoing war. Wine flows in and out, one person proposes destroying Nord Stream.
More than four months later, on September 26, three powerful explosions in two Russian gas pipeline systems to Europe were discovered near the island of Bornholm, Denmark.
The sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic is one of the most daring acts of sabotage in modern history, the Wall Street Journal said.
According to those involved, the Nord Stream attack cost Ukraine about $300,000.
"I always laugh when I read media speculation about a major operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites. The whole thing stemmed from one drunken night and the iron determination of a few people brave enough to risk their lives for the country" - an officer participating in this plot said.
According to a participating officer and 3 well-informed sources, initially, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky approved the plan to destroy Nord Stream. But later, when the CIA learned and asked to stop, the President of Ukraine ordered a stop. However, the then Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army Valeriy Zaluzhniy - currently Ukraine's Ambassador to the UK - continued to carry out the sabotage.
After a nearly 2-year investigation by German police into the Nord Stream case, in June this year, German federal prosecutors issued the first arrest warrant for a professional Ukrainian diving instructor.
It is known that in September 2022, the group of suspects in the Nord Stream case rented the yacht Andromeda at the port of Rostock, Germany. The yacht was rented with the help of a Polish travel agency set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a cover for financial transactions nearly a decade ago.
Among the group of suspects who sabotaged Nord Stream, there is one active military officer who is an experienced captain, and four people who are experienced deep-sea divers. The captain took leave while the unit was fighting on the southeastern front in Ukraine and his commander was not informed of the captain's activities during his leave.
Armed with only diving equipment, satellite navigation, mobile sonar and an open source map of the seabed recording the locations of pipelines, the group of suspected Nord Stream saboteurs set out. 4 divers work in pairs. While operating in the cold, dark waters of the Baltic , the suspects used the powerful explosive HMX with a timed detonator.
Severe weather forced the Nord Stream suspects to make an unplanned stop at the Swedish port of Sandhamn. At that time, the group discussed whether to cancel the Nord Stream sabotage or not, but the storm quickly dissipated and the sabotage continued.
After Nord Stream was sabotaged, German investigators questioned dozens of witnesses, surveyed the seabed around the blast site and sifted through reams of data including digital communications, travel and traffic records. financial translation. Luckily for investigators, in their haste to leave Germany, the group of suspects who sabotaged Nord Stream forgot to wash the Andromeda yacht, helping German detectives find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples of the suspect group. violation.
Nord Stream investigators then identified the suspects' mobile phone numbers and Iridium satellite phones to reconstruct the yacht's entire itinerary, including berthing in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Poland.
US officials applied for a court order to require Google to provide emails that a Ukrainian businessman used to rent a yacht and hand over the information to German investigators. Data shows that this Ukrainian businessman contacted several boat rental companies in Sweden and Germany since mid-May 2022.
Investigators then analyzed all mobile phone data streams in the area the cruise ship passed through, combing through thousands of connections to distill relevant data. By November 2022, German investigators believed that Ukrainians were behind the Nord Stream explosion.
However, Ukrainian officials involved in or familiar with the Nord Stream case believe that it is impossible to bring any commanding officer to trial because there is no evidence other than consensual conversations about wanting to blow up Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.
