Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to one officer who participated and three people familiar with it. But later, when the CIA learned of it and asked the Ukrainian president to pull the plug, he ordered a halt, those people said.
Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, who was leading the effort, nonetheless forged ahead.
Not exactly on their own initially according to this article.
Zelensky took Zaluzhniy to task, but the general shrugged off his criticism, according to three people familiar with the exchange. Zaluzhniy told Zelensky that the sabotage team, once dispatched, went incommunicado and couldn’t be called off because any contact with them could compromise the operation.
Except for the German federal prosecutors, Dutch officials, former Ukranian commander in chief, and the sabotage team themselves, I suppose you’re right.
Days after the attack, in October 2022, Germany’s foreign secret service received a second tipoff about the Ukrainian plot from the CIA, which again passed on a report by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD. It offered a detailed account of the attack, including the type of boat used and the possible route taken by the crew, according to German and Dutch officials.
Inasumuch as you can have a source for a covert operation after the fact.
The part about Zelenski ordering sabotage while drunk has both no source and is utterly ridiculous.
I agree. I also didn’t see it in the article -?
If you want to find German federal prosecutor records, or Dutch itelligence reports - I’m not sure where to go for those.
It pains me to say this but the WSJ, while being a Murdoch rag and certainly guilty of ridiculous bias in the way it reports things, isn’t really known for making up things whole cloth like the Daily Mail or something.
Ukranian special ops, acting on their own
Edit: Story
Not exactly on their own initially according to this article.
“Oops” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thst story is completely fake - it has no source.
Except for the German federal prosecutors, Dutch officials, former Ukranian commander in chief, and the sabotage team themselves, I suppose you’re right.
Inasumuch as you can have a source for a covert operation after the fact.
Can you link the direct source - like, statement of german police or official press conference?
I’ve spent some time looking into this and found no direct sources.
BTW, these articles are copypaste - There were bunch of much older (2023?) ones which I also failed to find any credible source for.
EDIT: Correction, the first articles about this came out 3 months ago
The part about Zelenski ordering sabotage while drunk has both no source and is utterly ridiculous.
I agree. I also didn’t see it in the article -?
If you want to find German federal prosecutor records, or Dutch itelligence reports - I’m not sure where to go for those.
It pains me to say this but the WSJ, while being a Murdoch rag and certainly guilty of ridiculous bias in the way it reports things, isn’t really known for making up things whole cloth like the Daily Mail or something.
Do you think German police would issue an arrest warrant against a Ukrainian, while their country is supporting Ukraine in the war, if they didn’t have any solid proof? https://apnews.com/article/germany-nord-stream-pipelines-explosions-investigation-d5579ea69995e8f309ac58c588c39004