A group of Ukrainian businessmen financed the notorious September 2022 attack that sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline network, plunged Europe into an energy crisis and—at one point—threatened to spark World War III.
A high-ranking Ukrainian general coordinated the plan. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed off on it—that is until the CIA got wind and warned him to stand down.
After Zelenskyy tried to call off the attack, hatched at a boozy May 2022 gathering of military and business elites, Ukraine’s former top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi “ignored the order” and pressed on. Two undersea pipelines bringing natural gas from Russia to Germany were ultimately sabotaged.
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That’s the crux of an explosive new report in the Wall Street Journal, citing multiple law enforcement and security sources. It could deal a major blow to the close relationship between Kyiv and Berlin, one of Ukraine’s strongest backers in its fight against Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion.
“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” one senior German official told the Journal.
Zaluzhnyi and an official with Ukraine’s intelligence agency SBU denied their involvement in the attack, while the latter rebuffed the suggestion that Zelenskyy ever approved the plan. Zelenskyy advisor Mykhailo Podolyak denied the country’s involvement Thursday in a statement to Reuters.
Dutch and German media outlets reported last year that the CIA warned Ukraine in June 2022 not to blow up the pipeline, three months before the sabotage and shortly after the agency received an alarming message from the Netherlands’ military intelligence service MIVD, which was tipped to an imminent attack on Nord Stream. Zelenskyy heeded the advice, but couldn’t rein in his general, who is now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom.
While the potentially seismic impact of the Journal’s story plays out in diplomatic circles, German police are hunting for a prime suspect believed to have planted the explosives.
A joint investigation by German broadcaster ARD and newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit published this week said federal prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant against a Ukrainian national, identified only as Volodymyr Z., last seen in the Polish capital Warsaw but who has since gone into hiding. Reached by the German outlets, he denied his involvement.
The suspect, said to be a stocky 44-year-old with a goatee, is a diving instructor. He was found out in part because he was caught on camera on the night of Sept. 8, 2022, near the northern German island Rügen, one of the passengers in a speeding white Citroën that was likely ferrying crew and supplies to the Andromeda, the 50-foot yacht that officials suspect was used to carry out the attack. (The boat was rented in the mainland coastal city Rostock on September 7, and on the 8th was in Wiek, a town on Rügen’s east coast).
According to the Journal’s story, German investigators believe the yacht was leased via a Polish travel agency secretly set up by Ukrainian intelligence a decade ago. The crew consisted of four divers and one military officer with sailing experience. One of them was a woman, chosen in part to lend credence to their cover story as a group of friends on holiday.
It’s possible that Germany could have nabbed Volodymyr Z. if not for a simple administrative error. German prosecutors sent the arrest warrant for him to Poland, his last known country of residence, in June, but Polish officials confirmed that he crossed the border into Ukraine last month. He wasn’t stopped by border officials because German officials didn’t enter his name in a database of wanted persons.
In the immediate aftermath of the Nord Stream sabotage, governments engaged in heated sparring over who is responsible for the attack and its sophistication.
But, according to the Journal, the total financing was just $300,000. “I always laugh when I read media speculation about some huge operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” an officer who was involved in the planning told the Journal. “The whole thing was born out of a night of heavy boozing and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the guts to risk their lives for their country.”
