Zelensky team denies role in Nord Stream 2 sabotage

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team denied involvement in the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Germany’s move to indict a Ukrainian diving instructor raised the curtain on Western assessments.

“Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources … and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” Mikhail Podolyak, one of Zelensky’s top aides, told Reuters. “Ukraine has nothing to do with the Nord Stream explosions.”

Ukraine’s denials have come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of Poland’s announcement that a Ukrainian suspect evaded a German arrest warrant by leaving his home in Warsaw and crossing into Ukraine this summer. The results of the German investigation could complicate Berlin’s relationship with Kyiv, in the midst of a war in Ukraine that NATO allies agree holds deep significance for Western security.

“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” a senior German official told the Wall Street Journal, which revealed Berlin’s findings in a new report this week.

The pipeline drove a major controversy within NATO from its inception because it would enable Russia to ship natural gas directly to Germany while bypassing other central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Ukraine.

German authorities believe that the sabotage was organized by Ukrainian military leaders who relied on Ukrainian businessmen to “finance and help execute the project,” according to the report. Their assessment could stoke a controversy in NATO’s intelligence and diplomatic circles, where some allies are keen to exonerate Ukraine. 

“However, some Western and German intelligence officials … [have] doubts over Ukraine’s responsibility, considering a so-called ‘false flag operation’ aimed at covering up Russia’s involvement,” Politico reported. “This theory is particularly popular in Polish security circles, which sent a document with the names of Russian suspects to German’s BND Federal Intelligence Service.” 

Russian officials have dismissed previous reports of Ukraine’s involvement, as they instead characterize the operation as a U.S. initiative conducted at the expense of its own allies. “Such an explosion, so powerful and at such depth, could only be conducted by experts backed by the entire potential of a state that has relevant technologies,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said last year.

The pipelines exploded in September of 2022, just as Polish officials inaugurated the opening of a pipeline from Norway that European allies regarded as a replacement for Russia’s natural gas. The Kremlin, at the time, was throttling the provision of natural gas as winter approached, in an apparent effort to use Germany’s need for the gas as leverage to undermine Western support for Ukraine. 

“Ukraine’s involvement in the Nord Stream explosions is absolute nonsense. There was no practical sense in such actions for Ukraine,” Podolyak told AFP. “It is clear that the explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines did not stop the war, did not deter Russian aggression, and did not affect the situation on the front line.”

In any case, one Nord Stream line came through the sabotage unscathed, as Putin has emphasized in public calls for Germany to continue purchasing Russian gas. “Can we restart Nord Stream 2? We can! It would take a week. But they don’t want to,” Putin said earlier this year.