Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline and then, at the request of the CIA, tried to revoke it, but without success, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports, citing four unnamed Ukrainian senior officials. officials.
As reported by the Politico portal Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces who led the sabotage, "ignored the order" from Zelensky and "continued" with the plan to destroy the gas pipelines that transport Russian gas to Germany.
In response to questions from the WSJ, Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine's ambassador to the UK - and enjoys diplomatic immunity - denied responsibility for the attack.
So did a senior official of the Ukrainian intelligence service SBU, who also rejected the claim that Zelensky approved the plan at all.
Zelenskiy himself insisted last year that his country was not behind the September 2022 attack, saying he "would never act like that".
Politiko reports the German newspaper Die Zeit that Volodymyr Zhuravlev, a Ukrainian diving instructor wanted by German authorities on suspicion of being responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, was last seen in Poland, which is why Germany sent a warrant for his arrest in that country. However, he managed to escape to Ukraine.
In addition to Žuravljev, the German media named two other people as suspects — Svitlana and Yevhen Uspensky, a married couple who run a diving school in Ukraine and for whom Žuravljev reportedly worked as a diver.
In an interview with Politiko yesterday, Svitlana Uspenska denied that she or her husband were involved in the attack, insisting that she was in Kiev when the attack happened.
Uspenska confirmed that she is a diver, but said that the maximum depth to which she dives is 30 meters. The explosions on the North Stream occurred at a depth of 70-80 meters, writes Politiko.
German intelligence officials told Politiko and Welt am Sonntag (Welt am Sonntag) that they doubted Ukraine was indeed responsible for the attack and were considering a "fake operation" aimed at covering up Russian involvement.
This theory is particularly popular in Polish security circles. Poland sent a document with the names of Russian suspects to Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND). However, they did not convince the German investigators, so the prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Žuravljev, according to Politiko.
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