Sabotage of Nord Stream: new leads lead to Ukraine, according to the German press

New leads in the investigation into the sabotage of the two Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany lead to Ukraine, German weekly Der Spiegel said on Friday.

Police investigations focus in particular on a sailboat, the “Andromeda”, likely to have been used to transport explosives used for sabotage in September 2022 in the Baltic Sea. The metadata of an email sent during the rental of the sailboat would lead to Ukraine, says Der Spiegel. The weekly also reports the discovery in the boat of traces of an explosive, octogen, "very widespread both in the West and in the former Eastern bloc".

On September 26, 2022, four huge gas leaks preceded by underwater explosions were detected in these pipes connecting Russia to Germany and carrying most Russian gas to Europe. An attack was quickly suspected, giving rise to all-out speculation about the perpetrators of this logistically complex and diplomatically ultra-sensitive operation.

Almost six months after the explosions that hit the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, the responsibility for the underwater attack remains a mystery despite criminal investigations in the countries of the region (Germany, Sweden and Denmark). The boat is believed to have left Rostock, a port in northern Germany, on September 6 with a team of six people on board, including divers and a doctor.

At the beginning of the week, other German media, members of an international consortium of journalists, traced the thread of the rental of the boat, carried out by a Polish company which would in fact be owned by Ukrainians. The investigators are also exploring a track "in Ukrainian military circles", according to the media Süddeutsche Zeitung, RND and WDR. One of the passengers on the sailboat, with a Romanian passport, "turned out to be a Ukrainian national", who "would have served in the past in an infantry unit".

All these clues “agree with the estimates of several intelligence services, according to which the authors would be to seek in Ukraine”, summarizes Spiegel. “We now wonder if the act could have been carried out by an uncontrolled commando or by the Ukrainian secret services and to what extent certain elements of the Ukrainian government apparatus were aware”, he concludes.

Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, these strategic energy infrastructures have been at the heart of geopolitical tensions, fueled by Moscow's decision to cut off gas supplies to Europe in alleged retaliation against sanctions. Western.