A US media report has revealed that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew about Ukraine’s plan to attack the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines three months before it happened in September last year.
The Washington Post, citing leaked information posted online, reported on Tuesday a European spy agency told the US agency of Ukraine’s plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline three months before the attack.
The CIA came to know last June that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to blow up the Russia-to-Germany project, the newspaper reported.
The Ukraine military divers, who planned the attack, reported directly to the country’s military commander-in-chief.
Two of the pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, known as Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational.
Back on September 26, three huge gas leaks, preceded by a series of explosions, occurred on the pipelines. The powerful blasts, according to Moscow, knocked out three of the four strings of the Nord Stream network off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm.
The 1,200-kilometer pipelines, operated by Russian gas giant Gazprom, are not currently in operation, but they both still contain gas under pressure.
According to the Washington Post report, the US Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira purportedly shared intelligence reporting online on Discord. He was arrested in April and charged.
The Post claimed it obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.
The newspaper reported that the CIA shared it with Germany and other European countries in June 2022.
White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that investigations into the Nord Stream attack were active.
“The last thing that we’re going to want to do from this podium is get ahead of those investigations,” Kirby said when asked about the Post’s reporting on the matter.
In February, renowned American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed the United States Navy planted explosives under the Nord Stream gas pipelines in a covert sea operation.
In a detailed report published in his blog, Hersh, citing his own investigation into the September sabotage, claimed that the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea was ordered by the White House and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy.
Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist known for his reporting on US crimes during the wars in Vietnam and the Middle East, said that US Navy deep-sea divers planted the high-powered C4 explosives under the gas pipelines under the guise of NATO naval exercises.
According to his reporting, the Norwegian military then activated the explosives remotely when they received the relevant order.
The report came amid a war of words between the US and Russia over the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines.
Moscow has said the United States should try to prove it was not behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines that connected Russia to Western Europe.
Russia has said it considers the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines “an act of international terrorism” and will not allow it to be swept under the rug.
Russia has rejected the US media reports. Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that such reports are an attempt to divert attention from the real perpetrators and absolve NATO countries.
Source: AFP
