Photo: Radio Svoboda
A recent report from the far-left Washington Post now concedes that Ukraine, not Russia, could be behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline.
The news outlet has revealed that a senior Ukrainian military officer played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline in 2022.
The officer in question, Roman Chervinsky, a decorated colonel in Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, is said to have coordinated the sabotage operation.
WaPo reporter that Chervinsky, 48, managed logistics and support for a six-person team that carried out the attack, planting explosive charges on the Nord Stream pipelines via a sailboat operating under false identities.
This covert operation resulted in three explosions that caused significant damage to the pipelines, leaving only one of the four gas links intact as winter approached.
WaPo reported:
Chervinsky did not act alone and he did not plan the operation, according to the people familiar with his role, which has not been previously reported. The officer took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, said people familiar with how the operation was carried out. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about the bombing, which has strained diplomatic relations with Ukraine and drawn objections from U.S. officials.
Ukraine has launched many daring and secretive operations against Russian forces. But the Nord Stream attack targeted civilian infrastructure built to provide energy to millions of people in Europe. While Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas conglomerate, owns 51 percent of Nord Stream, Western energy companies, including from Germany, France and the Netherlands, are partners and invested billions in the project. Ukraine had long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes, depriving Kyiv of huge transit revenue.
Chervinsky has said he was not responsible for the Russian attack and that in trying to persuade the pilot to fly to Ukraine and hand over his aircraft, he was acting on orders. He calls his arrest and prosecution political retribution for his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. Chervinsky has said publicly that he suspects Andriy Yermak, one of Zelensky’s closest advisers, of spying for Russia. He has also accused the Zelensky administration of failing to sufficiently prepare the country for Russia’s invasion.
“The operation to recruit the Russian pilot involved units of the SBU, the Air Force, and the Special Operations Forces,” Chervinsky said in his written statement to The Post and Der Spiegel. “The operation was approved by the commander in chief Valery Zaluzhny.”
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, a bombshell report revealed that President Joe Biden personally oversaw a secret mission in which specialized U.S. Navy dive crews bombed the underwater Nord Stream pipelines, according to Daily Mail and Seymour Substack.
The report claimed that in June of 2022, Navy divers planted C4 explosives on three Nord Stream pipes, and three months later, they were detonated by a sonar buoy that emitted a signal that triggered the bombs.
“The best divers with deep diving qualifications are a tight community, and only the very best are recruited for the operation and told to be prepared to be summoned to the CIA in Washington,” the source told Seymour Hersh.
“The Norwegians joined the Americans in insisting that some senior officials in Denmark and Sweden had to be briefed in general terms about possible diving activity in the area. In that way, someone higher up could intervene and keep a report out of the chain of command, thus insulating the pipeline operation. “What they were told and what they knew were purposely different,” the source told me. (The Norwegian embassy, asked to comment on this story, did not respond.),” Hersch added.
On Feb. 8, 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a detailed account of how the Biden regime’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan instructed the CIA to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines in December 2022, well before the start of the war.
Hersh’s detailed account remains the most convincing version of the events, although it is routinely either “debunked” or ignored by the mainstream press, who prefer to speculate about anonymous Ukrainians who blew up the massive, 3-inch thick concrete and steel pipelines using a sailboat.
Writing again, Hersh revealed new details from his intel source about how the Biden administration misled the CIA into thinking the sabotage plans were meant to deter Putin and preserve peace, while instead aiming to cripple Germany economically and make sure Germany did not succumb to Russian pressure.
“The Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine, Hersh wrote “It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”
Hersh’s source explained “the real reason why the Biden administration brought up taking out the Nord Stream pipeline.” While Russia was supplying gas and oil to the world via more than a dozen pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2 ran directly from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany.
“The administration put Nord Stream on the table because it was the only one we could access and it would be totally deniable,” Hershs CIA source told him. “We solved the problem within a few weeks—by early January—and told the White House. Our assumption was that the president would use the threat against Nord Stream as a deterrent to avoid the war.”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland was clearly involved in the plot, Hersh writes, since on January 27, 2022, she “stridently warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, “one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,” while noting that “We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies.”
When German chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Washington on February 7, 2022, Joe Biden warned that “If Russia invades … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Asked by a reporter how he could promise this since the pipeline was under Germany and Russia’s control, Biden said: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”
Earlier this year, writing on his Substack page, Nord Stream reporter Seymour Hersh slammed the New York Times and Washington Post for refusing to “run a word” about the pipeline story: “Calls for a full investigation have been ignored by the US media”, Hersh lamented.
Speaking to Berliner Zeitung, Hersh said “The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than [see] Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine.” (English version on Jacobin Magazine.)
Speaking to Democracy Now!, Hersh said the U.S. decision to bomb the pipelines was meant to lock allies into support for Ukraine at a time when some were wavering: “The fear was Europe would walk away from the war.”
“I’m embarrassed to say it after all those wonderful years I had at The New York Times, I wasn’t even thinking of taking a story like this to The New York Times. They’ve decided that the Ukraine war is going to be won by Ukraine, and that’s what its readers get, and so be it. That’s their call. So, I just did my reporting,” Hersh told Amy Goodmann on Democracy Now!
The post Far-Left WaPo Now Reports that Ukrainian Colonel Roman Chervinsky Played a Key Role in the Nord Stream Sabotage appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.