“It’s good,” the US agency told Ukrainian saboteurs about the plan, according to the outlet’s sources
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) discussed a plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea with Ukrainian saboteurs, German outlet Der Spiegel has reported, citing sources in Kiev.
Berlin apparently believes the September 2022 blasts that crippled the key connectors that delivered Russian gas to Germany were detonated by several Ukrainian frogmen who, possibly with the assistance of Poland, rented a small yacht, sailed into the Baltic and dived to extraordinary depths to set explosives and blow up the pipelines.
Moscow has repeatedly expressed deep skepticism over the German version of events, highlighting then US-President Joe Biden’s open threats to blow up the pipeline, the presence of NATO ships above the explosion sites in the weeks prior to the blasts, and arguing that such an operation could not have been executed without direct government assistance.
According to the latest Der Spiegel report, Ukrainian agents told the CIA about a plot to destroy Nord Stream in spring 2022, during a series of meetings following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
The Americans “apparently liked the plan,” the Ukrainian sources told the outlet, and the two sides exchanged technical details about the operation, reportedly codenamed ‘Diameter’.
The US agents “told our boys: ‘that’s good, that’s fine’” about the plan to target the pipelines, a person familiar with the conversations told the outlet, noting an impression that the US was willing to finance such an operation.
According to Der Spiegel, in early summer 2022, the Americans changed their stance, saying that they could not support the operation and would not provide money for its execution, according to the report.
Der Spiegel claimed that Washington then actively tried to prevent the sabotage of the pipelines, but the Ukrainians went ahead with the plan anyway.
In February 2022, Biden warned that in the event of an all-out military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream. We will bring an end to it.”
A year later, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that Biden had given the order to destroy the pipelines. Hersh’s source claimed that US Navy divers mined Nord Stream using the cover of NATO drills. The White House called the report “complete fiction.”
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Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at the US as the possible culprit behind the explosions. Washington had the technical means to carry out the operation and stood to gain the most from it, considering that the attack disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU and forced a shift to more expensive American-supplied liquefied natural gas.
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