German Gov’t Ignored Intelligence Warnings of Ukrainian Plot to Blow Up Nord Stream Pipelines: Report Swedish Coastguard Kustbevakningen / Paxton Tomko UnSplash

Officials in Germany were provided with intelligence detailing a Ukrainian plot to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines months before the attack took place, but the warnings were ignored and no preventative measures were taken, an investigation has claimed.

In what may become to be seen as a major intelligence failure by the German state, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government allegedly failed to make any preparations to prevent the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines despite purportedly receiving intelligence of a Ukrainian plot to destroy the energy import infrastructure.

According to a report from Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) received an encrypted, top secret cable in June of 2022 from Dutch military intelligence, which was also reportedly shared with the CIA, warning of a plot organised by then-Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi to dispatch six Ukrainian commandos traveling under false identities to rent a boat and dive to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and blow up the pipelines.

The intelligence indicated that the sabotage was planned to take place during the NATO ‘BALTOPS’ military exercise, which took place between 5 and 17 June 2022. After the exercises were complete and the attack did not materialise, the German government decided that the intelligence was false and therefore made no preparations to prevent the attack, and failed to even warn the federal police, the navy, or federal and state counter-terrorism centres of the potential threat.

If true, this failure to act turned out to be a miscalculation, and one which allowed the attackers on a budget of less than $300,000 to destroy the two pipelines on September 26th, 2022, and put Germany’s long-term energy supply in doubt.

“It was a crazy plan that only succeeded through fierce determination and enormous luck, but was also aided by incompetent security agencies and political intrigue,” Spiegel commented.

The leading German news magazine has claimed to have identified most of the members of the Ukrainian crew involved in the attack and have since gone underground. Yet Spiegel said that it would not disclose their names publicly as it could result in them becoming the target of “Russian assassination squads” or even of the “Ukrainian security apparatus”.

“Some are civilians, others soldiers. They were hired and trained by a group that had been planning and carrying out secret operations for the Ukrainian security apparatus over the years. Some of the perpetrators have long-standing ties to the CIA,” the magazine reported.

Despite some of the attackers allegedly having ties to the U.S. intelligence service, and President Joe Biden’s public threats to destroy the pipelines, the report claims that in June of 2022 the CIA’s representative met with Volodymyr Zelensky at the presidential palace in Kyiv to demand that the plan be called off. Zelensky has claimed that he had no foreknowledge of the plot, however, Spiegel claims that he at least was made aware during the meeting with the CIA official, months before the actual attack.

The report also claimed that “U.S. agents” made direct contacts with members of the Ukrainian attack squad — alleging that “they knew each other” — to demand they call off the plot. After becoming aware that Western intelligence had become aware of the plot, then-Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi is reported to have told the commando team that if they didn’t abandon the plan, everyone involved would likely go to prison.

However, Spiegel says that this was not interpreted as a direct order to call off the strike, and with the operation being almost impossible to carry out on the Baltic Sea during the Autumn or Winter months, they decided to go ahead for fear of being delayed until the following Spring.

The claims from the widely circulated news magazine alleging the German government was made aware of the plot to destroy critical energy infrastructure, which as of 2021 accounted for half of Germany’s annual natural demands, comes two weeks after the collapse of the ‘traffic light’ coalition government of Olaf Scholz and just months before Germans will head to the polls to select a new government.

Beyond the broader questions over whether the report is indeed factual, it is also unclear if Chancellor Scholz was made personally aware of the Nord Stream plot, the apparent failure of his government to act on key intelligence may serve to further damage his already waning popularity, given the economic and energy crises that befell Germany following the sabotage of the pipelines.

The report may also call into question Berlin’s continued support for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia as countries like Germany, France, the UK are said to be plotting on how to keep funding for the war going if incoming U.S. President Donald Trump cuts off American aid as he seeks to broker a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.

Politicians on the left and the right of the political spectrum in Germany, such as leftist-populist Sahra Wagenknecht and the AfD’s Alice Weidel, have already called for the cessation of German aid to Ukraine over Kyiv’s alleged involvement in the Nord Stream plot.

There have also been demands for the German parliament to investigate the government over what it knew about the sabotage scheme.

Wagenknecht said in August: “If it turns out that German authorities knew about the attack plan in advance, then we would have a scandal of the century in German politics.”

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