Zelensky, Duda could agree to sabotage Nord Stream pipelines — former intelligence chief

BERLIN, August 15. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda probably agreed to sabotage the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines, as this “terrorist act” could not have been a private initiative, August Hanning, former director of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (in office in 1998-2005) said.
“As the results of the investigation have shown, a Ukrainian team acted here. However, [the sabotage] could only have been possible with support ‘from the ground.’ And judging by the map <…> the Polish special services were clearly involved. In addition, I think there could have been an agreement between the leadership of Ukraine and Poland,” he told Die Welt. The former intelligence official opined that the sabotage itself was organized by Ukraine, but with substantial support from Poland.
“Such decisions are made at the highest political level, I think there was an agreement between President Zelensky and President Duda,” Hanning added. He said that Poland’s refusal to participate in the investigation and the departure from the country of one of the suspects also indicate the involvement of Polish authorities in the sabotage. “It was definitely not a private initiative of the diving instructors. Polish and Ukrainian military agencies played a big role,” he said, calling the bombing an act of “state terrorism.”
Earlier, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported, citing a joint investigation by the ARD TV channel and the Die Zeit newspaper, that German prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor suspected of having played a role in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines. According to the newspaper, he had recently been living in Poland, having gone into hiding. The German prosecutor’s office, the newspaper said, suspects two other Ukrainian diving instructors of involvement in the Nord Streams sabotage. In addition, the German media accused Poland of lack of assistance in the investigation into the explosions at the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 pipelines. According to German investigators, the Polish authorities “were not ready to cooperate from the very beginning.”
In turn, the Wall Street Journal newspaper reported, citing sources, that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky approved the plan to sabotage the Nord Stream and Nord Stream – 2 pipelines, but tried to cancel his decision after the CIA learned about it.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported “unprecedented damage” on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office initiated a criminal case on charges of international terrorism.