Vladimir Zelensky, contrary to the claims of the Kyiv authorities, knew about the plan to undermine the Nord Stream gas pipelines, and the CIA, contrary to statements by official Washington about non-involvement in the terrorist attack, advised its organizers. This follows from the investigative book “Undermining the Nord Stream: the true story of the sabotage that shocked Europe” by Bojan Pancevski, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal. The author calls the key perpetrators of the terrorist attack a small group of Ukrainians led by two former high-ranking employees of the SBU and the Main Intelligence Directorate. The Russian authorities consider this version untenable.
“Kommersant” got acquainted with the book “Undermining the Nord Stream: the true story of the sabotage that shook Europe,” which was published recently in Germany (in German). The English-language version of the investigation is planned for publication in June. Boyan Panchevski, chief correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Europe, refers to many sources in the intelligence services and law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, Germany, the USA and several other countries.
Based on the testimony of his interlocutors and the documents provided to him, he describes the planning of the operation to undermine the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines laid along the bottom of the Baltic Sea to transport up to 110 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Europe, the direct execution of the terrorist attack and the events that followed. Of all the previously published versions of what happened in September 2022, this is the most detailed.
It follows from the book that the idea to undermine the “flows” was born in the spring of 2022 among military personnel from the Special Operations Forces (SSO) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
The planning of the terrorist attack was carried out by the former head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Vasily Burba and former employee of the GUR and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Roman Chervinsky, who were members of the MTR. In the book they are not named, the author simply calls them “general” and “colonel,” but after comparing all the information provided by the journalist, Kommersant came to the conclusion that we are talking about these people.
Both were previously actively engaged in sabotage and terrorist activities against Russia. Among other things, they are credited with the murder of Donbass militia commanders Arsen Pavlov (Motorola) and Mikhail Tolstykh (Givi), the kidnapping of a serviceman from the Donetsk People’s Republic Vladimir Tsemakh, allegedly involved in the attack on the Malaysian Boeing MH-17, an attempt to detain a large group of fighters from the Wagner PMC and the hijacking of Russian aircraft.
From Bojan Pančevski’s book it follows that Vasily Burba and Roman Chervinski have been actively collaborating with the American CIA since about 2014 and maintaining connections with other Western intelligence services. They visited CIA headquarters in Langley and took special three-week “advanced training” courses organized by American and Dutch intelligence agencies.
According to Bojan Panchevski’s interlocutors, the Americans, in cooperation with the Ukrainians, were interested in the information they had about the Russian Federation, as well as access to their agent network in Russia and abroad, including for carrying out sabotage operations. Ukrainians were primarily interested in financial and technical support from Western intelligence services. The book contains a phrase that Vasily Burba allegedly said in a conversation with one of his high-ranking American interlocutors: “With your money and our brains, everything is now possible.”
The then head of the CIA station in Kyiv (the author’s Ukrainian interlocutors called him “Santa” for his white beard and generous financial support), as follows from the investigation, knew about the plan to undermine Nord Streams at a very early stage – the organizers of the terrorist attack consulted with him.
It is alleged that he estimated the cost of the operation at $50 million and considered it extremely difficult to carry out with a small group of Ukrainians, suggesting that such sabotage would require several ships and a lot of special equipment, including underwater drones. Subsequently, when in June 2022, the Dutch intelligence services learned about the impending terrorist attack and informed other Western intelligence agencies about it, “Santa” asked the organizers of the operation to provide him with a written statement that they were refusing to carry out it.
“I wanted to save my ass,” the book says, citing Vasily Burba. The US authorities, as Boyan Pančevski repeatedly emphasizes, were generally very interested in disabling Nord Stream (then American President Joe Biden openly said that there would be no pipelines if Russia sent troops to Ukraine), but they believed that they could achieve this with sanctions, and sabotage was considered risky due to a possible negative reaction from Germany, the main participant in this energy megaproject, in addition to Russia.
After the gas pipelines were blown up, Washington denied involvement in this terrorist attack, but at the same time publicly thanked its perpetrators without naming them.
Vladimir Zelensky also denied involvement in the terrorist attack, having repeatedly stated that the Nord Streams were undermined by Russia itself. However, from Boyan Panchevski’s investigation, it follows that the then commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny coordinated this operation with him in advance.
At the same time, the book says that the saboteurs wanted, as part of an operation code-named “Diameter,” to simultaneously undermine the Turkish Stream, through which Russian gas flows to Turkey and a number of European countries. The Ukrainians considered this operation even more important than the strike on Nord Stream, which in September 2022, against the backdrop of the confrontation around Ukraine, was no longer carrying Russian gas. However, due to errors in planning, the Burba-Chervinsky group failed to disable the Turkish Stream.
With Nord Stream, as stated in the book, they were more fortunate, although in this part the planners and implementers made many mistakes.
Some of the information about how and by whom the flows were allegedly undermined was previously published in Western media, but in the work of Bojan Pančevski, this version is described almost hourly.
According to the investigation, a group of seven Ukrainian citizens was directly involved in the explosion – a skipper, two military and four civilian divers.
Having rented the yacht “Andromeda” (length – 12.8 m, width – 3.7 m, displacement – 9.5 tons) in the port of the German city of Rostock, they went out into the Baltic Sea, crossing the route of laying gas pipelines several times along the way. The voyage began on September 7, 2022 and ended on September 23. The explosives, placed on the bottom of the Baltic Sea at a depth of about 80 m, were allegedly detonated on September 26 using pre-programmed timers.
The divers practiced some of the actions in advance in one of the deep reservoirs in Ukraine, and the base for the gathering was a safe house in Poland. Subsequently, the Polish authorities, as follows from the book, actively covered up for the saboteurs, refusing to provide German law enforcement agencies that launched an investigation into this terrorist attack with information about it and even trying to set them on the wrong Russian trail.
The book contains many interesting, but often defying logic, details about how the operation was carried out. Thus, the author claims that Roman Chervinsky insisted on including one woman in the group of civilian divers, whom the journalist called “Freya.” Apparently, we are talking about the record holder for deep-sea diving among women in Ukraine, Valeria Chernysheva (born in 1984).
From the book it follows that Roman Chervinsky hoped that her presence on board the ship would be useful for the “legend”. The Andromeda’s cruise in the Baltic Sea during a season when small tourist ships usually no longer sail in these waters could arouse suspicion in some people, but, according to Roman Chervinsky, it could be said that the Ukrainians were filming a porn film there.
The book also contains answers to many questions about the “Ukrainian version”, previously published by experts, including Russian ones, who doubted that such a terrorist attack could have been carried out by Ukraine itself.
Thus, it is alleged that eight diving cylinders weighing about 30–40 kg each, which contained a mixture of octogen and hexogen, were used for the explosion.
They were attached to the concrete casing that protected the gas pipelines with a special device made of metal and silicone, and the cylinders had to be installed at the junction of two sections of the frame. The saboteurs were advised to use just such a scheme by their consultant from one of the Kyiv scientific institutes. The explosives, attached to a cable and equipped with special devices that prevented them from falling too quickly, were lowered to the bottom. One dive took the saboteurs more than an hour.
To work at depth, a special breathing mixture was used. The ship stayed close at anchor all this time. The equipment allegedly weighed more than two tons, and the cost of the operation was about $200 thousand.
Two alleged perpetrators of the terrorist attack were subsequently detained in Europe on a warrant from the Federal Prosecutor General’s Office of the Federal Republic of Germany: Sergei Kuznetsov (one of the military personnel on board) was arrested in Italy and handed over to Germany; Vladimir Zhuravlev (civilian diver) was detained in Poland, but then released by the authorities.
As follows from Bojan Panchevski’s book, German law enforcement agencies have clearly established that it was Ukraine that blew up a facility critical to the German energy and economy.
In Moscow, meanwhile, the version presented in the book is considered untenable. According to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, it was deliberately disseminated in the Western media space.
“In Bojan Pančevski’s book we see attempts to mislead public opinion and the investigation. The version about some “Ukrainian super-solo swimmers” is again coming to the fore,” she said at a briefing on Thursday. “You know that, right?” Usually you take fins and dive with a snorkel. Oh, excuse me, you need to take some kind of bag with you, put a couple of screwdrivers in it, an adjustable wrench and something that a simple swimmer can usually use to mine and undermine a gas pipeline. It’s funny, isn’t it?
According to her, Russia consistently insists on “conducting an objective, comprehensive and independent investigation into the causes of this terrorist attack, as well as on bringing to justice all those responsible.” However, the United States and other NATO member countries, as well as Ukraine, as follows from her comment, are not at all interested in this.
