No “false flag” operation
Report: Nord Stream saboteurs fled to Ukraine
08/25/2023, 1:40 p.m
In the dispute over Russian gas supplies, many believe the Kremlin to be the mastermind behind the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. Several secret services are investigating the case. Now investigators can largely rule out Russian involvement.
In September 2022, unknown persons carried out an attack on the Nord Stream pipeline. The West and Russia blame each other for the damage caused by the blast. According to research by “Spiegel” and ZDF, the saboteurs are said to have fled to Ukraine after the crime.
According to the report, experts from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police come to the conclusion through a data analysis of IP addresses, among other things, that the suspects were in Ukraine before and after the act of sabotage and communicated from there. According to security circles, the picture that this evaluation produced is fairly clear.
In general, investigators and agents now suspect that a Ukrainian commando was responsible for the unprecedented attack on the German energy infrastructure. One knows far more than is publicly known, a top official tells the magazine. There are no indications of a “false flag” operation by Moscow, in which the Russians triggered the explosions and deliberately set the wrong track in Ukraine.
Months before the attack, Dutch military intelligence and the CIA had warned of a Ukrainian sabotage commando and precisely the scenario. In Berlin, the warnings were considered irrelevant after the originally assumed time for an attack had passed.
Command considered attack on Turkstream
The Attorney General is still investigating unknown persons for “causing an explosive device explosion and anti-constitutional sabotage”. The authority does not want to comment on the ongoing process.
In addition to blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines in Ukraine, an attack on the Turkstream gas pipeline in the Black Sea was apparently also planned. Russian gas flows through them to Turkey. Such a warning was also forwarded to the Federal Intelligence Service. It is unclear why the attack plans against Turkstream, unlike the attacks in the Baltic Sea, were not carried out.