Three months before the explosion of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, US authorities learned of the Ukrainian army’s intention to carry out such a “secret attack”. About this June 6 writing The Washington Post newspaper, which refers to the leaked secret documents.
“Three months before saboteurs blew up the Nord Stream, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack <...> involving a small team of divers who reported directly to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (Valery Zaluzhny – Approx. Russian media),” the newspaper said.
The publication claims that the details of this plan were collected by a European intelligence service (one of which is not specified) and transferred to the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in June last year.
The European intelligence findings were posted on the Discord platform, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira (he was arrested in April on suspicion of leaking secret Pentagon documents). WP claims to have received a copy of the document from one of Teixeira’s friends.
According to the newspaper, the intelligence report is based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine. The information from this source in the United States has not been confirmed, but the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries in June last year, as stated by its anonymous interlocutors at the publication.
The newspaper points out that the participants in the planned sabotage were supposed to report directly to Zaluzhny – he would have “been put in charge so that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would not know about the operation”.
The White House and the CIA declined to provide comment to the newspaper. Ukrainian officials, who had previously denied their country’s involvement in the sabotage, did not respond to requests for comment.
Foreign publications have already written more than once about the possible involvement of Ukraine in the sabotage of Nord Streams. In particular, an investigation carried out in May by the media companies NDR, WDR and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung showed that a Ukrainian soldier could be implicated in the case. Earlier, The New York Times wrote about US intelligence findings that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the explosions. Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh said in February that the United States and Norway were involved in the pipeline explosions. The journalist told, citing a source, how the United States allegedly placed explosive devices under the gas pipelines with the help of the Norwegian side. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commenting on Hersh’s documents, noted that Moscow had repeatedly spoken of the involvement of the United States and NATO in the undermining of the Nord Streams. According to Zakharova, “they didn’t hide it.” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March that the sabotage was carried out at the state level. According to him, claims of a connection to the incident by some pro-Ukrainian activists are “absurd”.
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