Spy Agencies: Ukraine Military Struck Germany’s Nord Stream Pipeline

The press — really the intelligence services feeding them the information — have gradually revealed the entirety of the Nord Stream 2 sabotage story (that they have known all along). And yet, even if their story is true it raises big questions they refuse to touch.

Conveniently the official story now points the finger at Ukrainians, but somehow not at official Ukraine. In their telling, Zelensky supposedly approved the attack, but then the CIA found out about the plot and told Ukraine to call it off, which  Zelensky allegedly did, but then his top general Zaluzhny went rogue and carried out the operation anyway.

That’s very curious because after supposedly carrying out an attack on NATO member and key Ukraine backer, against express orders of his commander-in-chief, Zaluzhny remained in his post for another 17 months.

It’s particularly curious because Zelensky ultimately fired Zaluzhny for the relatively minor infraction of giving an interview to The Economist and lobbying for mobilization. But gross insubordination was not cause enough??

One wonders if the CIA really wanted the attack called off, or if the demand was a show to appease the Europeans. The story points out the Dutch had learned what Ukraine was up to and brought the information to the Americans. Logically from then on it became impossible for the Americans to feign ignorance if anything happened to the pipeline…unless they established deniability by supposedly telling Ukraine to knock it off, and Ukraine supposedly agreeing…except for one rogue general to carry out the plot three months later anyway.

It’s also curious that responsibility in this telling is assigned to Zaluzhny. At the time of the attacks, Zaluzhny was overseeing the bitter Ukrainian offensives at Liman, and in Kherson. Yet he took time off these tasks to also personally oversee a six-man, civilian-military team doing spy stuff in Poland? Why? Ukraine has a hyper-active spy arm under Kyrylo Budanov, the well-known HUR, for just these purposes. Why would Zaluzhny be running his own international spooks from the Armed Forces General Staff?

But conveniently this places the blame on the one high-ranking Ukrainian who has since largely exited the picture. (Retired and essentially exiled to Britain as Ambassador since Zelensky feared his popularity in the political arena.)

Another thing, since this establishes that the CIA and the Netherlands knew the attack was almost certainly not carried out by the Russians, why didn’t they come forward in September 2022 and cleared them? Why did they allow accusations against Russia, they knew were wrong, to go on for months, heightening tensions in Europe?

And here’s another thing… all those who in September 2022 pointed the finger of blame at Moscow, and demanded that more sanctions be passed in response, or even that NATO ought to invoke article 5, will they now demand the same course of action be followed against Ukraine? Ought NATO now sanction Kiev, and ought Germany call for NATO members to assist her against Ukraine?

According to the Kiel Institute Germany has so far distributed or allocated over €23 billion in direct war aid to Ukraine (military, financial, and German share of financial EU aid), not counting loans.

More in The Wall Street Journal: link.