Did Zelensky initially agree to the plan to attack Nord Stream?

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Did Zelensky initially agree to the plan to attack Nord Stream? Article by Julian Staib • 4 hours • 3 minutes reading time One evening in May 2022, a group of Ukrainian military and business representatives are said to have toasted their country's resilience against the Russian aggressor. Fueled by alcohol and patriotic zeal, they are said to have come up with a radical plan: an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines, through which Germany - to the annoyance of not only Ukraine - had been supplied with cheap Russian gas. This is reported by the "Wall Street Journal", citing participants in the operation and Ukrainian military officials. The then commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valery Zalushny, was said to have been in charge of the project. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is said to have initially agreed to the plan. However, after the CIA secret service found out about it and asked Ukraine not to implement the plan, Zelensky is said to have ordered the operation to be stopped. But Saluzhny did not follow the order. He is said to have told the Ukrainian president that they had no contact with the attack team. "He was told it was like a torpedo - once you've fired it at the enemy, you can't pull it back, it just keeps flying until it goes 'boom'," a high-ranking Ukrainian officer familiar with the conversation told the Wall Street Journal. The entire operation - a "public-private partnership" - only cost around $300,000. The divers operated with a sailing yacht There has already been a lot of reporting about the sensational attacks and their possible authorship. There are entire documentary series about them that resemble crime thrillers. What is new now is that for the first time, responsibility has been clearly assigned to the leadership in Kiev. Zelensky replaced Saluzhny with Olexandr Syrsky as commander-in-chief in the spring of this year. Saluzhny is now the Ukrainian ambassador to Great Britain. He told the Wall Street Journal that he knew nothing of such an operation and that any claim to the contrary was a "mere provocation." A senior official in the Ukrainian secret service SBU denied any involvement by the government and Zelensky in particular. Zelensky's adviser Mykhailo Podoliak rejected the report on Thursday. "Ukraine's involvement in the Nord Stream explosions is absolute nonsense," he said. It is very likely that Russia was responsible for the September 2022 attack. "Such an act can only be carried out with great technical and financial resources," said Podoliak. "And who had all of that at the time of the attack? Only Russia." According to the newspaper, the attack was carried out using explosives that divers are said to have attached to the pipelines. This is consistent with other reports on the investigation into the attacks. The divers were reportedly operating on a sailing yacht. It was recently announced that the Federal Prosecutor's Office had issued an arrest warrant for a possible crew member, Ukrainian citizen Volodymyr Z. He lives in Poland but is now said to have traveled to Ukraine. According to reports, he was one of three employees of a Ukrainian diving school who were part of the five-person ship's crew. Unlike the Wall Street Journal, however, the reports always said that there was no evidence to date that the suspects had official connections to military or government circles in Ukraine. According to the Wall Street Journal, German investigators were able to trace the crew's journey using telephone data. After planting the explosives, the attackers are said to have neglected to clean the sailing yacht during their hasty escape from Germany, which led investigators to find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples from the crew. Despite the new reports, many inconsistencies remain. There is also a possible connection to Russia, which plays no role in the latest reports. One of the owners of the travel agency in Warsaw through which the sailing yacht was rented is said to have a Russian passport and to be in Russia. CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter pointed this out on Thursday. There is an "intense interest in having all traces lead to Ukraine," which is "part of the disinformation," said Kiesewetter on Deutschlandfunk. There is still a "very broad dark field" in the case, and it has not yet been ruled out that it was a "false flag operation" - in other words, an attempt to shift the blame onto Ukraine.