US had prior intelligence of Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipelines: Report
Breanne Deppisch
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The U.S. was reportedly told by a European spy agency that the Ukrainian military planned to covertly attack the Nord Stream gas pipelines three months before they were bombed.
The intelligence would mean that, for nearly a year, the U.S. and other European allies had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage.
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The intelligence was first shared with the CIA in June 2022 by a European intelligence service with close ties to the U.S. The report was obtained by the Washington Post after being shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira, who is accused of leaking a tranche of top secret government documents on the platform.
The report said the divers who had planned to carry out the attack were all members of Ukraine’s special military forces team and reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed services.
The report includes a number of highly specific details about the planned Nord Stream detonations, including the number of operatives and methods of attack, according to the Post, which obtained a copy of the intelligence report from one of Teixeira’s online friends.
It said that all members of the group were to report directly to General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was tapped specifically to head up the operation so as to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plausible deniability in any attack.
According to the intelligence summary, the military divers had planned to attack the Nord Stream pipeline following a massive allied naval exercise known as BALTOPS, which took place from June 5-June 17.
It said the military operation was “put on hold” for unknown reasons.
Still, details of the attacks line up. German investigators have said they believe six individuals used fake passports to rent a yacht, called the Andromeda, to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. They also believe the individuals involved are skilled divers, given the depth of the water. Western leaders have all described the blasts as an act of “sabotage,” though no one has said who was responsible for carrying out the explosions.
The CIA shared the information with its counterparts in Germany and other European countries, according to the Post.
In March, unnamed U.S. officials briefed on new intelligence said that it indicated that pro-Ukrainian actors, likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, were behind the explosions, the New York Times reported.
The U.S. officials said then they did not have evidence that the group was tied to Zelensky or that the perpetrators were acting on the orders of any Ukrainian government officials. Ukraine also denied any involvement in the explosions at the time.
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The CIA and other U.S. intelligence officials did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.