US officials have seen new intelligence that indicates a “pro-Ukrainian group” was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, while a senior Ukrainian official dismissed the claims.
In a cautious report that did not identify the source of the intelligence or the group involved, the newspaper said that US officials had no evidence implicating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the pipeline bombing.
However, the attack benefitted Ukraine by affecting Russia’s ability to reap millions by selling natural gas to Western Europe.
Photo: AFP / DANISH DEFENCE
At the same time, it added to the pressure of high energy prices on key Ukrainian allies, particularly Germany.
The intelligence suggested the perpetrators behind the sabotage were “opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,” the New York Times said.
“Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about ‘pro-Ukraine sabotage groups,’” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
US officials had no indication of who exactly took part or who organized and paid for the operation, which would have required skilled divers and explosives experts, the newspaper said.
They believed those involved were probably Ukrainian or Russian nationals, and that none were from the US or Britain, it said.
German investigators believed the unidentified group was made up of five men and one woman using professionally falsified passports, German media reports said.
German officials had identified the boat suspected to have been used in the attack, public broadcaster ARD and weekly newspaper Die Zeit said.
The yacht was rented out by a company based in Poland, belonging to two Ukrainians, according to the German media reports, which referred only to sources in multiple countries.
The commando group is said to have set sail from the north German port of Rostock on Sept. 6 last year and was localized the following day on the Danish island of Christianso in the Baltic Sea.
The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner uncleaned, with investigators able to find traces of explosives on the table in the cabin, the reports said.
The pipelines were ruptured by subsea explosives on Sept. 26, seven months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
US officials have “no firm conclusions” about the intelligence, “leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services,” the New York Times said.
The lack of a firm suspect meant international intelligence officials had not ruled out the possibility of a “false flag” operation to link the attack to Ukraine, the German media reports said.
Authorities in Germany, Sweden and Denmark have opened probes into the incident.
A spokeswoman for the German government said it had “taken note” of the New York Times’ report, referring back to the ongoing investigation.
“There is an ongoing preliminary investigation in Sweden, so I do not intend to comment on those reports,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters.
Speaking at the same news conference, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg echoed the remarks, saying it would be “wrong to speculate” before the investigations were completed.
Last month, veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the US was behind the operation to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines and that Norway assisted.
The White House blasted Hersh’s report, which cited an unnamed source, as “complete fiction.”
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