THE SABOTAGE OF the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 was approved by senior officials in Kyiv and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially gave his support, according to a report published today by the Wall Street Journal.

Speculation has long swirled about who was behind the operation, with both Ukraine and Russia trading blame. The United States and the UK have also denied accusations of involvement made by Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The Ukrainian President’s office has dismissed the WSJ report as “absolute nonsense”.

“Ukraine’s involvement in the Nord Stream explosions is absolute nonsense. There was no practical sense in such actions for Ukraine,” presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak told the AFP news agency.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine’s top military commander at the time, Valery Zaluzhny, oversaw the plan to blow up the pipelines used by Russia to deliver gas to Europe.

The idea emerged during a meeting of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen in May 2022, just months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion Ukraine.

Six people were directly involved in carrying out the operation, which cost around $300,000 and was privately financed, the report said.

Using a rented yacht, they sailed out to the area of the pipelines and dived down to lay explosives on them.

Zelenskyy also initially approved the operation. But when the CIA learned of the plan, they asked him to stop it going ahead and he ordered a halt.

But Zaluzhny, who was removed from his post earlier this year in a shake-up, pushed ahead anyway, the WSJ said, citing Ukrainian officials.

Zelenskyy took the military commander to task for going ahead with the operation despite the order to pull the plug, according to the paper.

But the commander replied that once the sabotage team had been dispatched, they could not be called off.

“He was told it’s like a torpedo – once you fire it at the enemy, you can’t pull it back again, it just keeps going until it goes ‘boom,’” a senior officer familiar with the conversation was cited as saying.

‘Mere provocation’

Contacted by the WSJ, Zaluzhny – now Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain – said he did not know anything about such an operation and any suggestion to the contrary was a “mere provocation”.

“It is clear that the explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines did not stop the war, did not deter Russian aggression, and did not affect the situation on the front line,” Ukraine’s presidential spokesperson said.

“Moreover, such an action significantly strengthened Russia’s propaganda capabilities,” he added, suggesting Russia had “direct motives” for carrying out the blasts.

The WSJ report comes a day after German media outlets had reported that German investigators probing the sabotage were now focusing on Ukraine, and had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man.

Most however did not report approval at the highest levels in Ukraine, apart from Der Spiegel, which mentioned the possible involvement of Zaluzhny.

Nord Stream’s two pipelines had been at the centre of geopolitical tensions as Russia cut gas supplies to Europe in apparent retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Four large gas leaks were discovered in September 2022 in the pipelines off the Danish island of Bornholm, with seismic institutes recording two underwater explosions just before.

While the gas leaks were in international waters, two were in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone and two in Sweden’s.

The pipelines were not in operation when the leaks occurred, but they still contained gas which spewed up through the water and into the atmosphere.

Denmark, Sweden and Germany all opened investigations into the explosions.

However, Denmark and Sweden both closed their investigations in February of this year.

Swedish investigators concluded the country’s courts did not have jurisdiction over the case while Danish police said there were insufficient grounds to pursue the case in Denmark.

Before the Swedish investigation came to an end, prosecutors concluded that the explosions were the result of sabotage likely carried out by a state actor.  

With reporting from - © AFP 2024