Officials believe pro-Ukraine group may have sabotaged Nord Stream – reports

Volodymyr Zelenskiy Usa New York Germany Russia Poland Ukraine city Moscow Extreme Citizens Battlefield reports

07.03.2023 - 22:55

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theguardian.com:

European and US intelligence officials have obtained tentative intelligence to suggest a pro-Ukrainian saboteur group may have been behind the bombing of the Nord Stream oil pipelines last year, according to reports in the New York Times and German newspaper Die Zeit.

German investigators believe the attack on the pipelines was carried out by a team of six people, using a yacht that had been hired by a company registered in Poland and owned by two Ukrainian citizens, according to Die Zeit.

The information has been shared between European intelligence agencies in an effort to establish more information about those who carried out the undersea bombings in September, an attack that had left western governments perplexed.

Details about the intelligence remain sketchy and it is unclear what confidence the US intelligence community places in the theory, as well as who may have organised, funded and directed such a daring attack on the gas pipelines running between Russia and Germany. But it is suggested that the government of Kyiv did not direct the underwater strike.

Russia said it wanted an independent international inquiry to be set up in response to the report. Its deputy envoy to the UN said Moscow would call for a vote at the UN security council on whether to launch one.

A senior aide to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told the Guardian the government in Kyiv was “in no way involved in the attack” ,which he said had no military impact on Russian forces.

“In the midst of a war … Ukraine and its allies would definitely not spend resources on something that would not bring us victory directly on the battlefield. It doesn’t make any sense. But it is extremely beneficial for Russia itself to try to switch attention from