Solving the Nord Stream attack mystery

Summary

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Front Burner (CBC): "Solving the Nord Stream Attack Mystery"

Date: June 26, 2026
Host: Jayme Poisson
Guest: Bojan Pancevski, Chief European Political Correspondent, Wall Street Journal; Author of "Nord Stream: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World"

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the dramatic sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea (2022)—a pivotal, mysterious act of infrastructure destruction that inflamed global tensions at the height of the Russia-Ukraine war. Host Jayme Poisson interviews investigative journalist Bojan Pancevski, whose book uncovers how a team of Ukrainian civilian divers allegedly carried out the attack. The conversation navigates the pipeline’s contentious history, the sabotage plot, the secretive operation, subsequent investigations, political fallout, and the complex moral and legal questions raised by the case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Was the Nord Stream Pipeline and Why Was It Controversial?

(02:30–07:36)

• Bojan Pancevski explains: Nord Stream was the world’s largest offshore pipeline system, built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany and Western Europe.
  • Comprised of Nord Stream 1 (operational since 2011) and Nord Stream 2 (never used due to sanctions and then the attack).
  • Highly controversial—critics saw it as deepening Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, potentially making Europe vulnerable to Russian political leverage.
• Quote:

  “It was designed to circumvent Eastern Europe and bring natural gas directly from Russia to Germany and Western Europe.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (04:08)

• The pipeline was described by some as a “geopolitical project... much more complicated and perhaps even sinister” than a mere commercial venture.
  • Example: Poland’s foreign minister compared it in 2005 to WWII pacts that devastated the region (06:10).
• While Germany’s leadership touted economic benefits, the deal also enabled Putin's strategy of keeping Europe hooked on Russian gas.

2. The Pipeline’s Ties to Russia’s War Economy

(07:36–10:24)

• Revenues generated by the pipeline (and gas sales to Europe in general) were significant in funding Russia’s military activities, including the war in Ukraine.
  • Europe continued to rely on Russian hydrocarbons even as the war escalated.
  • Many Ukrainians concluded the lack of consequence for Putin encouraged further aggression.
• Quote:

  “After all that had happened, Angela Merkel built Nord Stream 2 from scratch... So the Ukrainians will say, ‘Well, this is a lesson that the Germans and the Western Europeans taught Putin, that he can invade a whole country, but the gas trade will continue.’”
  — Bojan Pancevski (09:29)

3. The Sabotage: A Covert, ‘Hollywood’ Operation

(11:14–18:40)

• Pancevski recounts how a unit from Ukrainian Special Forces devised methods to cripple Russia’s war-financing infrastructure.
  • Of several plans, Nord Stream was targeted to hit Russia’s economy.
  • The operation involved a rented sailboat (“Andromeda”), loaded with explosives hidden in diving tanks.
  • Team: Three military officers (including a skipper and explosives expert) and four civilian deep-sea divers—‘tech divers’ capable of working 100 meters deep, who joined after a tough vetting process.
  • They sailed from Germany’s coast, spent two weeks at sea (including through a dangerous storm), and placed explosives in ways that maximized the pipeline’s internal pressure to destroy it.
• Memorable fact: One diver had Covid during the dive—making the feat even more extraordinary.
• Quote:

  “They managed to do it. And one of them even had Covid, which is rather extraordinary. When you have Covid, you’re basically banned from diving. Nonetheless, he kind of went down... and did his job. So it’s a pretty extraordinary kind of story, which is right out of Hollywood.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (15:37)

• Incredibly, the skills required even exceeded those of typical combat divers—hence the need for experienced civilian technical divers.

4. The Layers of Secrecy & Intelligence Warnings

(20:14–27:19)

• The Ukrainian government and President Zelensky have publicly denied direct involvement; Pancevski highlights that orders came from General Valeri Zaluzhny, then Ukraine’s army chief.
  • Some Zelensky advisors claim they only learned of the attack via TV.
  • Zaluzhny has provided “cryptic” semi-admissions, suggesting pride (see below).
• Quote:

  “[General Zaluzhny] left a comment saying… ‘Interesting days are ahead of us, but we will never be ashamed.’ Many people saw that as an admission, a tongue-in-cheek admission, a cryptic remark...”
  — Bojan Pancevski (23:51)

• The original plan (from Sweden, June 19) was aborted after Dutch intelligence warned the CIA, which in turn warned Germany and Ukraine to stop.
  • A formal written pledge not to attack was apparently signed, but the operation was eventually executed anyway (from Germany, in the fall).

5. Investigative Process & Triangulation of Facts

(27:19–30:12)

• Pancevski describes confidence in his reporting based on extensive interviews with perpetrators, commanders, international intelligence officials, and corroboration with German police investigation.
• He refutes conspiracy theories blaming the CIA or Russia, emphasizing that “the CIA did everything to stop it.”
• Quote:

  “I triangulated it many times over... I met the perpetrators. I met the people who put the bombs onto the pipeline... all of the data and the information from various sources checked out.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (27:41)

6. The German Criminal Case & Legal Conundrums

(30:12–35:29)

• Seven arrest warrants have been issued in Germany for the alleged team; one (the mission commander) is currently in custody and awaiting trial in Hamburg, accused of sabotaging German infrastructure.
• The case is politically awkward for Germany given its current strong support for Ukraine.
• Combatant immunity in international law versus civilian sabotage and the question of whether this was a legitimate act of war or a criminal act will be central to the trial.
• The accused feel betrayed and bitter, abandoned by their own government, especially as the pipelines themselves have subsequently been sanctioned by Germany and the EU.
• Quote:

  “They don’t believe to be criminals... They have zero awareness of having done something wrong. And so they are bitter and angry, doubly so, because in the end... they blew [the pipelines] up for them. What was the issue here? We’re working towards the same goal.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (35:16)

7. Larger Geopolitical and Legal Questions

(35:29–38:37)

• The incident raises complicated ethical, legal, and strategic issues:
  • Is sabotage of Russian-linked infrastructure in international waters an act of legitimate defense, terrorism, or something else?
  • How do definitions shift when military drones now attack similar targets daily?
  • Why prosecute sabotage of an already-sanctioned pipeline?
  • Legal precedent is ambiguous and will be tested in court, likely with major ramifications for international law.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the pipeline’s purpose:

  “It was both a commercial and a geopolitical project.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (07:09)

• On pipeline’s destruction being both a military and symbolic act:

  “The idea was to weaken the Russian economy and to cut the flow of cash that was going from the West to the Kremlin.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (12:17)

• On the mixed feelings of the alleged perpetrators:

  “They were told they were striking back against Russia, and now they feel abandoned by their own government. They have zero awareness of having done something wrong.”
  — Bojan Pancevski (35:16)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Pipeline history/controversy: 02:30–07:36
• Role in Russia’s war effort: 07:36–10:24
• Sabotage mission details: 11:14–18:40
• Secrecy, government responses, CIA warnings: 20:14–27:19
• Reporting process and evidence: 27:19–30:12
• Arrests, German trial, legal questions: 30:12–35:29
• Perpetrators’ perspectives and legal paradox: 35:29–38:37

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Conclusion

Pancevski’s investigation and this interview dramatically clarify the Nord Stream attack, pointing—aided by exclusive reporting—directly to a Ukrainian team operating covertly, with the implied if not explicit blessing of military leaders. The legal, moral, and geopolitical fallout continues, now centered around a German trial that will test the boundaries of international law, Allied trust, and wartime ethics.

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For a full, gripping account—including exclusive details of the saboteurs, intelligence intrigue, and ongoing court battles—listen to the full episode or read Pancevski’s book.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey Yetis, this is Nick and Jack from the Best One yet podcast. Now, the last company we worked at, they used Paylocity and everything just worked. It wasn't until launching our own media business this show that we realized how rare that is. Because Paylocity is one delicious burrito of operational needs. They roll up HR finance and it seamlessly into one delicious bite. When everything wraps together like that, all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools, you don't even need cilantro. You need one solution.

[B]

And.

[A]

And that is why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR finance and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Or as we call it, a delicious operational burrito. Yes, we do experience a one place for all your HCM needs besties. So start now at paylocity.com1paylocity.com o n e this is a CBC podcast.

[B]

Foreign. Hey everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. In the fall of 2022, Danish authorities scrambled fighter jets to investigate a series of strange disturbances in the Baltic Sea. What they found was extraordinary. An enormous geyser had opened up on the water surface. Evidence that something deep below had ruptured with enormous force. Just days earlier, a team of divers had planted explosives along Nord Stream, a multi billion dollar network of pipelines carrying Russian natural gas directly into Germany. In the days and months that followed, all kinds of theories emerged about who might have staged the attack and why. Suspicion centered on three possible saboteurs. The CIA, the Russian government, and Ukraine. Now, after years of investigations, intelligence leaks, arrests and reporting across Europe, a much clearer picture has emerged of what happened that night. Bojan Panchevsky is the chief European Political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book, the Nord Stream the Inside Story of the Explosions that Shook the World. He joins us today to talk about one of the most consequential acts of infrastructure sabotage in recent history. And the small group of Ukrainian civilian divers who, according to his reporting, pulled it off. Buljan, thank you so much for coming onto the show. It's great to have you.

[C]

Great to be on the show. Thank you for inviting me.

[B]

Let's get right into things. The indelible image of this story in many ways is that massive series of geysers which opened up on the surface of the Baltic Sea in the fall of 2022. But before we get into the details of the attack and the many theories concerning what took place, why don't you talk to me about the Nord Stream pipeline itself, what it was, why it was so valuable, and why exactly this group identified it for attack.

[C]

So the Nord Stream pipeline system was or is still the world's biggest offshore pipeline system. It took about 20 years to build to complete. It consists of two main pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream 1 was built a bit earlier. It came online, I think, in 2011. And Nord Stream 2 was completed just before the full scale invasion on Ukraine and never actually became operational. It was never certified. And then it was sanctioned because of the war and then eventually blew up.

[D]

It started with Monday's warning to Danish fishermen avoid a Baltic Sea area that was the scene of an unusual gas leak. Now, seismologists confirmed those were in fact explosions, at least two of them right near the path of Nord Stream 1 and 2, the Russian gas pipelines to Germany, currently offline since sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine stiffen. This footage filmed by the Danish military shows a bubbling whirlpool in the Baltic Sea caused by the gas leaking out. Scientists are cautious.

[C]

It was a massive, critical piece of infrastructure in Europe, one of the most controversial and most sort of important bits of infrastructure in the world. Perhaps it was designed to circumvent Eastern Europe and bring natural gas directly from Russia to Germany and Western Europe.

[B]

Yeah, you mentioned there it was controversial. I wonder if you could just tell me more about why.

[C]

Yeah, well, because essentially, since the inception of Nord Stream, and that was around the year of 2005, the concept was laid down and then they started working on it, people are quite nervous about building a massive pipeline that will kind of turn gas straight into Western Europe and increase the energy dependence of the Europeans on Russia's exports. And already back then, people were saying that this is a geopolitical project and not a commercial project. It's not purely to be understood as kind of a pipeline that is meant to bring energy to Europe, but rather that it's something much more complicated and perhaps even sinister. The then Foreign Minister of Poland, Radek Sikorsky called it, you know, compared it to a pact between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia that eventually carved up Eastern Europe, including Poland. And that was in the year 2005. Essentially the Germans, in the face of Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor rejected all that criticism. And she always used to say that it's purely a commercial project and that it's extremely important for Europe, for Europe's economies, especially for Germany, because it essentially brings cheap gas. And what's not to like when you get cheap energy. And in fact, it did work as advertised. It did fulfill the goals it was meant to fulfill. It did bring cheap energy to Germany. Germany's economy, the biggest in Europe, was booming, partly fueled by that cheap Russian energy. You know, Germany is the industrial locomotive of Europe and it certainly did the trick. But on the other hand, it certainly also fulfilled Putin's geopolitical plans to make Europe reliant on his gas exports and energy exports in general. By the time he launched the full scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union, I think took something like 50% of its gas imports from Russia directly. And Germany even more, I think it was around 55%. And something like 45% of its oil came from Russia. So that's kind of an extreme reliance on one single supplier, which gives a lot of leverage to that supplier and the kind of ability to, to put political pressure on. On. Right, yeah. So that was essentially both things turned out to be true. You know, the proponents were saying it will bring us cheap gas and it will boom. It will fuel the economy. That happened. And the opponents were saying, well, you'll become addicted to Russian gas and then you'll end up in trouble. And that happened too.

[B]

And also by the time that Russia invaded Ukraine and in 2022, there was also some belief that the revenues generated by this pipeline were being used by the Russian government to fund the war effort in Ukraine. Right. That the war in Ukraine would not have happened without Nord Stream, which is an argument I think that you cite in your book. And just how much of that was true?

[C]

Well, first, first of all, it's without any doubt true that hydrocarbons were bringing money into Putin's war machine. Because at the time he launched the full scale invasion, the Russian budget was, I think a third of the Russian budget came from, from the sale of sales of hydrocarbon. So it's pretty, pretty obvious that, that, that's, that is true. He Nord Stream alone was, was pumping billions of euros into the Russian coffers, into the state coffers of, of the Russian Federation. And that's just simply true. And even after the full scale invasion, Europe was unable to simply stop buying gas and oil from Russia because what are you going to do? It's a, it's pretty much a zero sum game that in the energy market, you know, once, once you rely on someone, it's very difficult to kind of shift very quickly. And indeed they didn't. So they continued. Even as they were sending weapons and ammunition to Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers, they were sending billions of Euros to the Russian war machines to kill Ukrainian soldiers. So it's kind of, you know, and the Ukrainians said that the pipelines essentially helped Putin in his conviction that he can attack and he can get away with the full scale invasion. And the argument they use for that is that he had already invaded Ukraine in 2014. We have to remember that was the sort of date when, the year when the war started for the Ukrainians. We always, we always take 2022 as the start of the war, but In Ukraine, it's 2014. So that was the year when, when Putin severed the Crimean peninsula, annexed the Crimean peninsula. He, he also occupied parts of vast parts of Ukraine's eastern territories in an area called the Donbas. And after all that had happened, Angela Merkel built Nord Stream 2 from scratch. So they build a whole new gigantic pipeline, even though he had attacked Ukraine and took its territory. So the Ukrainians will say, well, this is a lesson that the Germans and the Western Europeans in general taught Putin, that he can in fact do all these transgressions and aggressions and invade a whole country, but the gas trade will continue, you know.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And I think there is no consequences. Yeah, there is. It's not a random argument. You know, there is obviously something to it because there's plenty of evidence that Putin never intended to give up the Nord Stream pipelines or the energy trade, for that matter. And as I found out recently, his negotiators have been pushing with, with their American counterparts, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are negotiating on behalf of President Trump with the Kremlin for repair and reopening of the Nord Stream pipeline. So he's still holding on to that. So, you know, there is something to that Ukrainian argument.

[B]

I want to get to the attack now and how this all happened. You, you outline in your book, and in no kind of uncertain terms, that this attack was carried out by Ukrainian civilian divers who set sail from Ukraine into German and Danish waters on a single masted sailboat and conducted this operation during a storm. Though there were some connections to military and intelligence groups, the team itself was really made up of just seven people, including explosive experts and divers, who posed as a group of scuba diving enthusiasts on a yachting excursion. It's, it's really, it's really kind of right out of a movie. Right. I'm just. Can you walk me through the sabotage mission itself as well as some of the people who, who you say were, were on this, this vessel?

[C]

Essentially, it was conceived and, and then carried out, orchestrated by a Elite unit of the Ukrainian Special Forces, of the Special Forces of the Ukrainian Army. And around a month after the launch of the full scale invasion, which started on 24th February, 2022, after the battle of Kiev, when they basically won the battle of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, was saved. The Russians pulled back, failed to take it. And then these guys sat down. The commanders of that unit, or some of them anyway, senior officers. They came from the background of the intelligence services of Ukraine. They had around 25 years of experience in special operations, hybrid warfare, economic warfare, sabotage, assassinations behind enemy lines and things like that. And so they proposed around 10 or a dozen projects how to strike at Russia's wartime revenues. The idea was to weaken the Russian economy and to cut the flow of cash that was going from the west to the Kremlin. And one of these projects was the attack on Nord Stream. They eventually they ended up basically conceiving a plan that involved a sailing yacht and a crew of six people. Initially they were six. The seventh person then joined them later. The crew consisted of three military officers. One of them was a skipper, the other one was an explosives expert, and the third one was the commander of the mission. And the other three crew members were civilians. And they were all deep sea divers, or as they're known in the kind of diver lingo, technical divers, tech divers. These are people who can go very deep to the bottom of the Ocean, you know, 100 meters below the surface. And towards the end of the mission, three days before the end, a seventh person, another deep sea diver, also the civilian, joined them. And what they did was they set sail from the German Baltic coast in this rented boat, a yacht called Andromeda. And they loaded it with explosives which were concealed in sort of oxygen tanks, diverse oxygen tanks, which they basically made with the help of a old engineer who analyzed how pipelines sort of operate and figured out that you only actually need a tiny bit of explosive to unleash a powerful chain reaction involving the extreme pressure inside the pipelines. Because you have These pipelines are 1200 kilometers long. That's almost, almost thousand miles, you know, sort of 800 miles, whatever. And they're highly pressurized. So if you strike a tiny little hole in the pipeline, the interaction between the inside pressure and the outside pressure at the bottom of the ocean will kind of rip it apart. And that's exactly what happened. So, you know, after, after about two weeks at sea and they ran into a major storm, they essentially risked their lives. They were diving during the storm, which is extremely dangerous. And they managed to do it. And one of them even had Covid, which is rather extraordinary. When you have Covid, you're basically banned from diving. Nonetheless, he kind of went down to the bottom of the Baltic and did his job. So it's a pretty extraordinary kind of story, which is right out of Hollywood.

[B]

I mean, it's unbelievable to hear that one of them had Covid, because you also read in your book that most U.S. navy SEALs couldn't go down as deep, nor could most members of Britain's sbs. Right?

[A]

That's right.

[B]

They said it was done by these kind of just ordinary civilians.

[C]

Well, because they had the Special seal. I mean, that was the reason why they hired the civilians in the first place, because essentially they started off looking for people for divers, so called combat divers in their own Special Forces. And they have plenty of combat divers in Ukraine, very good ones. Thing is, they don't necessarily need to go that deep. You know, the Navy seals, what's their job? Their job is to kind of maybe put mines on a. On a ship, on the hull, attached on the hull of the ship, or for a river or cross a body of water. But their job is not to operate at the very bottom of the ocean. You know, that is a very unusual thing to do, and it involves a special skill set. You know, 40 meters below the surface, you already can't really breathe oxygen anymore, so you have to breathe a mixture of different gases because oxygen becomes toxic for the human body at that depth. So they couldn't find the Ukrainian officers, couldn't find anyone within their fold who was actually able to do that. And then one of them, who was a hobby diver himself, proposed that they simply hire civilians, because he knew that they're quite a few civilians in Ukraine who could do that, who had the skill set. And the commanding officers immediately kind of accepted the idea because they were actually used to deploy civilians on their missions behind enemy lines in the occupying territories of Ukraine or even in Russia proper. I mean, with the caveat that they actually did run the candidates through a very grueling recruiting process. Essentially, they had to prove their credentials as divers, but then they also had to show that they had the nerve and the kind of stamina to do this and that they had to prove their patriotism. So they were sort of scanned by the playbook of the Ukrainian Secret Service. They tapped their phones, they put microphones and cameras in their private quarters. They scanned their social media in order to see how they reacted to the Russian attacks. And after they. Only after they established that these were like kind of dyeing the wool Patriotic Ukrainians. That's when they eventually recruited them.

[A]

Hey Yetis, this is Nick and Jack from the Best One yet podcast. Now the last company we worked at, they used Paylocity and everything just worked. It wasn't until launching our own media business this show that we realized how rare that is. Because Paylocity is one delicious burrito of operational needs. They roll up hr finance and it seamlessly into one delicious bite. When everything wraps together like that all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business. You don't need more tools, you don't even need cilantro. You need one solution. And that is why Paylocity built a single platform to connect H finance and IT with AI driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Or as we call it, a delicious operational burrito. Yes, we do experience a one place for all your HCM needs besties. So start [e-mail].

[B]

Not so friendly reminder that no one who's actually good at their job is the office bully you like at all. But we can handle that. For all of the no fluff advice for getting ahead in your career without losing your mind. Listen to clock in with Emily Durham wherever you get your podcasts. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has maintained that he knew nothing of these intacts and was uninvolved. The same is true of the Ukrainian government writ large who has framed this as like an event that didn't involve them in any material way. You know, how would you respond? Respond to that?

[C]

Well, I elaborate on this in my book. So essentially what happened was the highest state official or slash military officer who approved the operation was the then commanding General of the armed forces, General Valeri Zaluzhny, who has since been fired and is now Ambassador of Ukraine to Great Britain. He approved the operation. Initially it was an operation of the armed forces. It was like I said, conceived and executed by people who served in an elite special forces unit. And then people around Zaluzhny, the General say that at one point he actually informed President Zelenskyy in a briefing in which he told him about a number of operations they were doing, including this operation, and that the President was actually told. Now this doesn't mean that the President ordered or that he was involved in any operational sense, but that he was simply informed that this was no kind of secret to him. The President obviously denies that. He's denied that publicly several times. His advisors have told me privately many times that he did not, in fact know. In fact, one of his advisors assume, I quote in the book, told me that they all found out from the television. They were sitting in the cabinet of the presidential administration. And then the kind of footage came of these huge explosions in the middle of the ocean. And that's how they found out that was his version of events. So, you know, we may never find out. It's not really relevant that much for the court case or anything like that, because it's pretty much impossible to prove involvement at that high level. But, you know, you never know because General Zaluzhny actually has presidential ambitions. The general is now ambassador, as I said, but he, I think, would like to run for president whenever there is an election in Ukraine. And if he does so, then, you know, he may yet come to discuss this matter in public. I believe, personally, because, you know, for a number of reasons, I believe that I can't really go into it. But one thing I can tell you about is that I exclusively reported about how the German police identified the Ukrainian suspects and issued seven arrest warrants for everyone who they believe was on that yacht. And that article of mine was translated by Ukrainian outlet and put on their Facebook site. And General Zaluzhny, the ambassador, used his official profile as ambassador of Ukraine to Britain to comment on this article. He kind of left a comment saying, I'm quoting from memory now, he said something like, interesting days are ahead of us, but we will never be ashamed. And many people saw that as a kind of an admission, you know, a tongue in cheek admission, a cryptic remark that kind of signaled that he's not ashamed of the operation. And that's certainly how it was perceived in Germany within the investigation circles. You know, I spoke to some of the investigators who said, we're basically know, he's essentially, he's admitting, you know, that he's not ashamed of what happened. So, you know, we'll see, we'll see what happens. But I think for now it's pretty clear Zelensky does not want to be involved in this. One very important thing to remember when discussing all these political issues is that when the operation was conceived, and as I said, that was just a month after the start of the, of the full scale invasion. Germany in Kiev in Ukraine was not perceived as a friend and partner. Quite the opposite. Germany was still buying gas through Nord Stream and otherwise from Russia. Germany was at that time refusing to supply weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainian forces. Right, who were fighting for survival. They were in an existential battle, you know, to survive as A nation. And the Germans, who have a long standing pacifist policy and also they are very tied to Russia in many ways, were unable to help the Ukrainians in the very beginning. Politically, it took a very long time, months and months for them to kind of shift this enormous tanker of German foreign policy and eventually to unleash material support for the Ukrainian struggle. And therefore when the operation was planned, nobody thought Germany is a friend. Nobody cared whether Germany would suffer because of the loss of gas and the destruction of the pipelines. They didn't care at all. Now the thing is, the operation was postponed once because it was originally meant to happen on the 19th of June, and it was meant to be launched from Sweden, in fact, not from Germany, but sort of two, three weeks before the launch, the details of the operations were leaked by the Dutch military intelligence service to the CIA in the United States. And then the CIA promptly warned the Germans and also told the Ukrainians to cease and desist and to stop their operations. So they warned directly through CIA channels the people who were masterminding the operation. They went straight to one person who is a general, a four star general who was involved in this and they told him he had to stop. And they also asked him to pledge in writing that he would not carry out this mission. And he did that. In fact he did pledge in writing to the CIA counterpart that he wouldn't do it. And you know, they went ahead and did it anyway but. And then, you know, people in the American system, in the Biden administration told me that they also had warned the presidential administration of Ukraine, I. E. The kind of office of the President, that this should not be done right, that because it's a precarious sort of geopolitical thing, that Germany needs to be on board, that they can't risk German support, et cetera. Zelensky's advisors told me they have no recollection of that warning. They didn't know about it. And they said, you know, who knows who they told? Maybe they told the secretary, maybe they told the technical person, maybe it was like a low level official who received this phone call or whatever it was. Anyway, it didn't reach the cabinet, it didn't reach the President, it didn't reach his advisor, so we didn't know about it. That's what the Ukrainians are saying about the whole thing.

[B]

William, there so much detail in your reporting, so much of it is like completely exclusive. I'm like not asking you to give away your sources or anything on air, but I just wonder for people listening if you could just kind of give us a sense of why you're so confident about all of this information that you're telling us now.

[C]

Oh, I triangulated it many times over the years. You know, I reported this story since, well, since it's basically since the attack happened. On the second day after the attack, I started working on the story. So I met the perpetrators. I met the people who put the bombs onto the pipeline. I met their commanders. I, I spoke to their commanders. Commanders. I spoke to their colleagues and comrades. I spoke to a bunch of people at the CIA, the National Security Council in the United States, which is the, the body that connects the intelligence White House. I spoke to people who were at the White House at the time, during the Biden administration and all of their sort of, you know, all of the data and the information that came from various sources checked out. And fundamentally, I think the biggest proof for me personally was in the early days at least, or, or, you know, towards and in the course of my investigation was that I then realized that the findings of the German police were, you know, equivalent to what I was being told. Right. Not in that detail that I had because obviously the Germans were unable to travel to Ukraine like I was, you know, because of the jurisdiction. You know, their jurisdiction ends at the borders of Germany. But you know, the suspects, the findings, they had sort of matched what I, what I had already. So, and you know, a lot has been said, I mean, you will have noticed there are a bunch of conspiracy theories and I think you, you raised that issue in the introduction that a lot of people said, oh, it must have been the Russians. You know, other people said it must have been the CIA, because who else? You know, the CIA is always the favorite culprit in these things, but in fact, you know, the CIA did everything to stop it. You know, I, I spoke to very many people at the CIA at all levels. I mean, starting from a very top level to, to the mid management and also to people who were on the ground. And I can say with extreme confidence that they were certainly not involved in the operation or rather that they actually, when it was leaked, they tried to stop it. So yeah, there's no, there's no doubt in my mind at all. And in fact, there is a trial coming in Germany of a, a suspect. And I think a lot of that, of what I've reported exclusively in my book will emerge from official sources during that time.

[B]

Yeah, and just you, you've mentioned this trial several times. Is it just one person that they're trying right now or, or have they, have they made several arrests? Is it just warrants right now is

[C]

they have seven arrest warrants. One person was arrested. He's been accused of having been the commander of the mission of the boat. And this person was arrested in Italy. He was then sort of extradited to Germany last year. And now he's sitting in a Riemann prison awaiting trial in Hamburg, in the city of Hamburg. So he will be put on trial this year, maybe in the summer, maybe in the fall. And I think the prosecutors in the indictment will reveal all the evidence they've gathered in the past three or so years, four years by then, if it's, if it's in the fall. And they will, I think, you know, for the first time publicly reveal what they know exactly and what their theories about who did it. And from what I'm being told, they will say this was an operation carried out on behalf of the Ukrainian state. I don't think they will go into whether it was Zelensky or whoever it was, but it's enough for them to say it was the Ukrainian armed forces, because the man they have in custody is a former officer. At the time of the incident. He was a captain of the army. He was a member of the special forces.

[B]

Are you surprised at all that Germany is pursuing a criminal case in this way? Because of course you talked about how at the beginning of the war, Germany wasn't one of Ukraine's strongest allies, but certainly they have stepped up, right? And now they are supplying Ukraine with lots of weapons.

[C]

Oh, yeah. Now they're the biggest backer of Ukraine in the world. You know, after, after America pulled back under President Trump, Germany has, has taken the lead and is now the, the biggest supporter of, of Ukraine. This year alone, I think they will, they will transfer something like 11.5 billion euros to, to the Ukrainians. So without any doubt, they, they are a huge supporter. And I think all this is embarrassing for the political leadership of Germany. And I, I know they, I know for a fact they're not happy that their police and their prosecutors have managed to kind of find the perpetrators and pin this on the Ukrainians. I don't think there's great enthusiasm in the top echelons of German politics about what's going on and about the upcoming trial. But that's just the way of the rule of law, right? I mean, the government in Germany cannot prescribe to the independent judiciary and the police how to do their job.

[B]

Just as like a parting thought, I wonder in your conversations with those who you say are responsible for these attacks. The people that we've talked about, maybe some that we haven't, how do they feel about it today? Like, I guess these are people that ultimately stand accused of carrying out an act of international terrorism in service of their country, and they may pay for that crime with the rest of their lives. And just in your conversations with them, are they disillusioned? Are they proud? Do they have regrets? Do they believe that they materially change things? Do they feel abandoned?

[C]

Well, look, all of these things, honestly, first of all, they're not charged with terrorism. They are charged with sabotage against the constitutional order of Germany. And I think they will be charged with war crimes because it seems like the prosecutors will accept that this was a military operation. And once you've accepted that in international law, combatants in military operations actually have immunity from prosecution by civilian courts, because in an act of war or war of defense, in that particular case, immunity applies. But the general prosecutors will say, sure, this was part of the war, but it wasn't legitimate because you're not allowed to blow up our pipeline. You know, this is not. Is way away from the front line. And also they will argue the perpetrators were not wearing uniforms, and therefore they did not identify themselves as combatants. And so we can't consider them as such. So that's, you know, as far as the charges go. But, you know, the people who participated are certainly are very bitter and disappointed and disillusioned because they were told that they were doing a great deed for, for their country. They were told they were striking back against Russia, and now they feel abandoned by their own government. They feel abandoned by the armed forces because the leadership of the armed forces has been changed, you know, has been replaced almost entirely. The people who were around, the generals, et cetera, during the time the operation was planned and executed are no longer around. So nobody kind of sticks up for these guys.

[D]

And.

[C]

And they are wanted there in international fugitives. They're not allowed to. To leave their country anymore, you know, because they. They are hunted down as criminals. And they don't. They don't believe to be criminals. They don't. They have zero awareness of having done something wrong. And so they are bitter and angry, doubly so, because in the end, Germany and the European Union actually impose sanctions on the pipelines. That. That's a very ironic thing that happened. The German chancellor basically offered up the pipelines for European sanctions, and now they're sanctioned. So one of the masterminds of the operation told me, why are they trying to arrest us? When they, obviously they think the pipelines are a bad thing if they put sanctions on them. So we blew them up for them. What was the issue here? We're working towards the same goal, so there's a lot of that. And also in terms of. I think it would be field day for the lawyers in court on this issue because it's so convoluted and kind of unprecedented because the German prosecutor's argument that this is German infrastructure, it was bringing gas to us and our economy, and it was way away from the front line. It was in international water, so you're not allowed to attack it. But then again, the Ukrainians are attacking targets like Nord Stream almost every day now. I mean, you may have noticed this week they blew up a giant refinery near Moscow. Tonight, the lid of an oil silo soaring into the air from the power of one explosion in Moscow. Outside the refinery, people run for their lives. Later, reports of black rain from burning oil.

[A]

It's Ukraine.

[C]

They've been hitting oil tankers in international waters in the. In the Mediterranean.

[D]

Sources confirming to ABC News that Ukraine's SBU carried out that unprecedented strike on a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea. Ukraine using aerial drones to strike the ship that was empty at the time. But Ukrainian officials claim it's used to help Russia skirt sanctions to continue funding its war.

[C]

They've been hitting export terminals, you know, pipelines, everything, and now they're using drones. The big difference is they don't have to use saboteurs because now they have this sophisticated drone programs that can hit them from afar. So the question, you know, a colleague of mine in Germany raised an interesting question on a panel recently. He said, what? Just hypothetically speaking, if Nord Stream was still operational and the Ukrainians would send in the drones to destroy the bit of Nord Stream that runs through Russian territory, would we then prosecute because the pipeline lands in Germany? If that's the argument that it lands in Germany, then we should prosecute for everything that ends up in Germany. And still, quite a bit of gas and oil from Russia does end up in Germany. So if someone attacks it elsewhere, is it still an offense to be prosecuted? And it's an interesting conundrum.

[B]

It's fascinating. Boyen, this was so great. Thank you so much for this. I really. I hope you'll come back as this trial moves along.

[C]

Sure thing. Be. Be. I'll be very glad.

[B]

All right, that is all for today. Front Burner was produced this week by Matthew Amha, Joytha Shankupta, Kevin Sexton, mackenzie Cameron, Dave Modi Kieran Outshorn and Kristin de Jagger. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabazon. Our senior producers are Imogen Burchard and Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McKay Blocos. And I'm Jamie Po. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week.

[A]

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.