U.S. Hid Ukrainian Plans to Bomb Nord Stream While Blaming Russia for Attack: Report
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly not told about the plans so he can deny knowledge about the incident
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The U.S. intelligence agencies were aware that the Ukrainian military was developing plans to bomb Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea prior to the explosions and the Biden administration’s decision to publicly blame Moscow.
The Washington Post ran the exclusive report last week that was based on the embarrassing intelligence leak earlier this year from U.S. Air National Guard member Jack Texeira.
PUTIN: WE CAN USEM DEPLETED URANIUM, TOO
The report said an unnamed European intelligence body informed the Central Intelligence Agency in June 2022—three months before the explosions—that the clandestine plans were overseen by the Ukrainian military chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and was not some kind of rogue operation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly not told about the plans so he can deny knowledge about the incident.
Zelensky denied the report.
“I am president and I give orders accordingly,” Zelensky told Axel Springer, the media company that owns Politico. “Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way.”
The Post reported that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces had been planning the attack. The CIA shared the report with Germany at about the time it received the data.
De Tijd, the Belgian newspaper, reported that military intelligence in Brussels received information about the incident from the CIA, which illustrates how “Western intelligence services, including Belgian ones, have been aware for months that Ukraine is probably involved in one of the most brutal and dangerous attacks on a European energy infrastructure.”
The U.S. warned Ukraine not to carry out the attack, The Wall Street Journal reported. The report said the U.S. was tipped off by the Dutch intelligence service. The report said Washington tried to dissuade Ukraine from acting out on the plans.
Weeks later, in August, the CIA informed at least seven different NATO allies that Ukraine no longer appeared to be plotting to sabotage the pipelines and that the threat had diminished, European officials said. Those officials now believe Ukraine hadn’t canceled the original plan but had modified it, selecting a new point of departure and tapping an alternative military officer to lead it. - WSJ
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the Nord Stream pipelines explosions and subsequent investigation.
About three weeks before Russian tanks began to move into Ukraine last year, President Joe Biden held a news conference in Washington with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and said—in no uncertain terms—that the first casualty of the war would be the Nord Stream pipeline.
“If Russia invades…again, then there will be no Nord Stream 2,” he said. “We will bring an end to it.”
Biden was asked to clarify the remark and responded, “I promise you, we will be able to do it.”
His remark appeared to be an administration-wide talking point at the time.
A month earlier, Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state, also mentioned Nord Stream’s fate if Russia was to attack.
“We continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies and I want to be clear with you today,” she said. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Nuland addressed a Senate hearing in February and told Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “Senator Cruz, like you, I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s reaction to the bombing also raised eyebrows. He said, “Ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy, and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”
Radosław Tomasz “Radek” Sikorski, the European Parliament member and former Polish foreign minister who is married to Russia hawk Anne Applebaum, tweeted a photo of the scene, “Thank you, USA.”
The Wall Street Journal also reported last week that German investigators are looking into the possibility that the sabotage team used Poland as an operating base before the attack. Poland denied the claim.
They weave very tangled webs, indeed...