Boozing Ukrainians plotted Nord Stream sabotage; Kyiv’s In-Kursk-shun Grows

(Originally published Aug. 16 in “What in the World“) For a riveting piece of journalism, read Bojan Pancevski’s scoop in The Wall Street Journal of how a small group of Ukrainians sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline.

Pancevski’s story should put to rest conspiracy theories about how the White House, with Norway’s help, may have orchestrated the sabotage of the vital pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany in order to eliminate the leverage Moscow had over Berlin on providing aid to Kyiv.

On the contrary, the plot was cooked up one drunken evening, Pancevski writes, by a handful of senior Ukrainian officers and businessmen celebrating the country’s success in halting the Russian invasion. With $300,000 in financing from the businessmen and led by the nation’s top military commander, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, and a special operations general, the group assembled six people to carry out the sabotage as a way of depriving Russia of the income the gas generated (even though Russia had already cut off supplies to Germany anyway). That group included Col. Roman Chervinsky, formerly with Ukraine’s version of the CIA, a seasoned skipper from Ukraine’s armed forces, and four divers from Ukraine’s special-operations unit, as well as two civilians with maritime expertise to execute the attack: a diving instructor identified by Germany investigators as Volodymyr Z. who was living near Warsaw, and a 30-something female. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky approved the plan, only to try unsuccessfully to halt it when the CIA found out about it from Dutch intelligence and warned him against carrying it out.

The group rented the 50-foot yacht Andromeda in the German port of Rostock, posing as a group of friends on holiday and using a Polish travel agency set up by Ukrainian intelligence to help complete their cover. They then sailed to a spot in the Baltic using open-source maps of the seabed to locate the pipelines, dived at least 80 meters below the surface, and planted explosives to the pipelines set with timers to detonate. The saboteurs have all since returned to Ukraine.

Speaking of secret operations, Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk province now turns out to be the result of at least a year of planning that U.S. intelligence knew about, but weren’t officially told for fear Washington would discourage Kyiv from carrying it out.

Ukrainian forces are using U.S.-supplied vehicles and weapons in Kursk, and are using Himars rockets to defend them, if not from positions in Russia, at least within range back in Ukraine. While Ukraine may ultimately not be able to hold the territory it has seized and now reportedly lacks the strength to push the Russian back along the frontline in Ukraine, it has succeeded in forcing Moscow to divert some forces and may be able to use the territory in Kursk as a bargaining chip for the swap of territory in any peace talks.

More importantly, the incursion’s success has boosted morale in Ukraine and in Washington, where Congress members are hailing it and calling for further military aid.

Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden has still rejected Zelensky’s requests to let him use American long-range Atacm missiles to hit targets inside Russia (Ukraine is using home-made drones instead). But Biden is reportedly now open to the idea of sending Kyiv long-range cruise missiles instead. The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles could be fired by Ukraine’s new F-16 fighters, which arrived early this month from Denmark and the Netherlands. The Jassm’s would give Ukraine the same range as the Atacms—about 300 kilometers.

The U.S. State Dept., meanwhile, has just approved the sale of 600 Pac-3 missiles, worth roughly $5 billion, to Germany for use in its Patriot air-defense batteries. Germany in March placed a $1.2 billion order for new Patriots and in July another $1.2 billion order for system components. Not all those Patriots will likely stay in Germany: Berlin has given Ukraine two of its Patriot batteries and promised it one more.