The Nord Stream pipeline mystery uncovered

Freddie Sayers: Hello and welcome back to unherd. The explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines that connect continental Europe to Russia has been one of the most contentious, one of the most fruitful for conspiracy actions since the Russia, Ukraine war began to some people. It was obviously Russia that did this. Who else would do this kind of sabotage? It's typical of the Russians and many people, particularly if they want to support Ukraine. This was the answer, even before the investigations began. To another group, people who are more skeptical about the US people who tend to take what they think is a more realistic view, it was obviously the US who else would be powerful enough to arrange something as complicated as the destruction of two deep sea pipelines. There is another theory that was not especially popular with either group, that actually we advanced on this show when talking to Jeffrey Sachs way back in February 2023 let me play you the clip. Scenario number two, what about some organization connected to the Ukrainian government that wanted to fast forward Western opposition to Russia, essentially frame the Russians for having blown up the pipeline and get increased Western support. It's been talked about as a theory. Is it plausible? Unknown: It's absurd. Ukraine doesn't have the capacity to do it. Ukraine would never do it without the US approval. So there's absolutely no way that some rogue Ukrainian operation is responsible for this. As Freddie Sayers: you can see, Professor Sachs didn't think much of that theory. A week later, we spoke to Fiona Hill, a security expert in Multiple US administrations. She then advanced the same thing. Let's have a look at what she had to say. I Fiona Hill: don't believe it was the United States. And I'll just, you know, kind of lay out there. Look, if the United States had done that by now, given, you know, the way that the United States system works, somebody would have laid claim to this. I mean, you can think about many other episodes in which it's it's got out. The United States can be a pretty leaky sieve in terms of information. Some of my colleagues who have been looking at this think Ukraine could have done it. And you know, it's not implausible, because, you know, they already managed to have a pretty significant strike on the Kerch bridge, for example, but I haven't seen any evidence. So Freddie Sayers: this third option that actually not the US, not Russia, but Ukraine, blew up this central piece of infrastructure that is half owned by Germany, half owned by Russia, has been knocking around since we first mentioned it on this show, and yet, only recently in the past week has actual detailed evidence of how Ukrainian agents loosely or closely connected to the Zelensky administration carried out this audacious, some might say, reckless, piece of sabotage. Today, we are joined by Boyan panjewski. He is the chief European political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He has been doing deep research and investigation into this for years, ever since it took place in 2022 and it is his account in the Wall Street Journal that has really exploded this story once again, and to many people, it's just new grounds for conspiracy in one direction or the other. But I wanted to hear from him what his evidence is, and what his account of this most remarkable event actually is. Boyan, welcome to the show. Glad to be on. So let's just start with what you believe the sequence of events to be. We first heard about it. The world heard about this in September 2022 when the evidence of the destruction of the pipeline became apparent. What do you think the sequence of events was? And when did it really start? It Unknown: all started sometime early May the same year, 2022 in Kyiv. It was kind of the very early phase of the full scale invasion of Russia, into Ukraine, and a group of military officers and private business people who were their backers. You know, the Ukrainian army relies a lot on private funding in this war, and also prior to the war, so they were sitting, kind of having a boozy dinner and celebrating the kind of great success their troops had been achieving on a battlefield, against the odds and against their own expectations, I believe, in some cases. And then someone kind of dropped this idea of blowing up the pipeline. Nord Stream one, two pipelines. They are actually four lines and two pipelines. Nord Stream one, which came online 2011 and Nord Stream two. Which never really came online. And so they saw this pipeline as a great source of revenue for Vladimir Putin and for his war chest, and they destroyed to blow it up. One of them told me that there was a welcome geopolitical kind of side effect to this, which wasn't the motive for them, but that that he would kind of sever the ties, the bonds between Western Europe and the Kremlin. And so they kind of went about planning their business, which that happened within days, literally, they got approval from the highest instances of the Army, the Commander in Chief, general Valery zolugi, and then they got a nod from the president himself, Volodymyr Zelensky. And then they just kind of put together a crew. It was a motley crew of four civilians and two military persons. The military persons had experience with sort of navigating a boat and preparing explosives. And the civilians were divers, well trained, well experienced deep sea divers. Let Freddie Sayers: me interrupt for one moment, because I think our audience at this point will want to hear what the evidence is for this. This, as you know, has been the topic of huge speculative theories on all sides. How do you know this? Unknown: Well, let me just sort of give you a little preamble, a little Prolog to whatever I may say. I think it's quite interesting how this case, as many other cases of kind of great significance in our world today, seems to, seems to cause a very interesting phenomenon. People sort of observe or process the facts according to their ideological persuasion. So I've very much noticed in my reporting, and I've been reporting this from day one, like literally from 26th of September, when when the pipes stopped working, people either support Ukraine and therefore believe Russia was behind this, and there's nothing you can do to change their mind. That's quite interesting. And then you've got people who don't necessarily support Ukraine, and a lot of them seem to think that the CIA did this, and helping them in their faith is is a kind of a sub stack report from Sy Hersh, a kind of old, legendary octogenarian American journalist Pulitzer Prize laureate who put out this, this fantastical story about Norway ganging up with America to blow up the Russo German pipeline. So that's the preamble. And I think there's little I can see in your in your program here that will change the minds of these two groups. Freddie Sayers: Since you mentioned sy her's report, let's, let's just spend a moment on it. Why do you think it's fantastical? Because, as you say, he's a very well credentialed investigative reporter. A lot of people thought that was pretty convincing, that it was in some way a US Norwegian tie up. Unknown: I mean, yeah, you could think that if you didn't know anything about Norway or the US today, you know, I spoke to the CIA person who would have been in charge of, I don't want to identify this person, but let's say a very senior CIA person in an executive function at the time. And he told me, he kind of looked at me, and he told me, you know, I spent my I used to spend my days with diversity trainings and stuff like that. I mean, if you think it's the 70s and kind of, we blow shit up across the world, then you're kind of diluted. That's not what the CIA is doing. And I think I have pretty good reasons to believe that's absolutely accurate. And then again, Norway, you know, Norway being involved in a conspiracy against Germany is also quite, quite, quite a kind of a, you know, it's a very tall tale. And also, I think it's kind of a Occam's razor, really. I mean, if you, if you think about the collective intelligence gathering capabilities of NATO, you know, the United States and Britain put together, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, all these kind of Baltic nations. They, you know, the Baltic is perhaps the most surveilled, you know, piece of territory in Europe, if not in the whole world. And so if they had any kind of evidence, that was Russia, or that was, in fact, America, this would have been, you know, how can you keep something like that from leaking? You know, Freddie Sayers: we're going to get on to this so, so let me just let's first get the sequence of events clear, at least in by your research. So let's start from the beginning. There's a dinner in May 2022 which is where this story starts. Who are the characters around the table? How many of them have you named? And what do we know about them? I haven't. Named Unknown: anyone, and I will not be naming anyone. They are sort of senior military people, senior officers, and they are kind of senior business figures who were working together at that time, and now too, with the army in terms of financing, in terms of even kind of producing, I think with time, they started also kind of manufacturing some things that are required for the army and so on. And you've Freddie Sayers: actually spoken to, or at least had direct communications with one or more of these, yes, yes, yes. And just because this is the bit people will be very focused on the kind of quality of your sources, I guess you are beyond any doubt that this meeting took place and that their account of it is correct. Yeah, absolutely. So why in at this point, would Volodymyr Zelensky have given permission for his own military to attack, essentially, one of his allies and one of the principal backers of his attempt to defend his country. Unknown: So at this stage, and this is mid May 2022 Germany was not one of the principal backers of Ukraine, yet, and Germany and Ukraine have a very complicated, difficult history of the bilateral relationship. Germany it's by no means the most beloved nation in Ukraine, and partially, or primarily, perhaps because of its dealing with Russia, dealings with Russia, and because of having built the two pipelines, Nord Stream one, Nord Stream two. What is also important to know is that Nord Stream two was built entirely after the the initial invasion of Russia in into Ukraine in 2014 and after Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean peninsula, which is Ukrainian territory in law. And despite all that, the government, subsequent governments of Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, simply just press the head and build the Nordstrom two pipeline. Freddie Sayers: Is it seen as a kind of symbol? Is it seen within Ukraine? Do you think as a as a problematic piece of infrastructure? Is this just something that the military people are interested in? Unknown: The sitting Justice Minister of Germany, Marco Bushman, is his name. He's a classic liberal from a kind of business friendly party, the free liberals. They're part of the ruling coalition. He said in, you know, shortly after the outbreak of the full scale invasion, he said, Nord Stream two was, in fact, our contribution to this war. So there are people, serious people, who think that the fact that Angela Merkel's government insisted on doing business with Putin even after he had annexed the Crimean peninsula, kind of send a message to Putin that the energy trade will be shielded from sanctions and kind of a program whatever you do, you know like we may sever all other relationships, diplomatic, cultural, commercial, but really, the one relationship that really matters to the Russian Federation is the energy trade. That's how they make their money. That, Freddie Sayers: in a way, gives us a plausible reason why Zelensky would have green lit it. He might have thought this would kind of force Germany to choose a side, basically, to get off the perch and get involved. And you could say that it was successful, if that's indeed what happened. What happens next? Well, Unknown: what happens next is they tasked a sitting general with experience in special forces operations to oversee the project, and then under him were a couple of experienced operatives, people with great experience in clandestine operations, and they were the kind of operational managers they put together the crew. The crew was deliberately chosen to be a mix of civilians and military officers. I think there were only two military people, junior officers, on the boat, and the divers were pretty much all of them civilians, four of them, and they decision was made to just use a small sailing yacht, or a normal size sailing yacht. And initially they wanted to depart from Sweden, because Sweden is much closer. The south of Sweden is much closer to to the spots where the water is shallower and where where the mines could be laid. And that plan was, however, abandoned for a very interesting reason. And this is a major twist in this story, sometime around June, early June, the Dutch Military Intelligence Service got wind of this plan and send a detailed intelligence report to the CIA, explaining that the Ukrainians who in the Ukrainian system, sort of explaining who are the people behind it and how they wanted. Blow up the pipeline. So this report reached the CIA. The CIA then warned the Germans bilaterally, and then they went to the presidential administration of Ukraine and told them not to do it, basically, to pull the plug on operation. Freddie Sayers: So this is in June 2022, until that point, he's in the loop, or either he's green lit it or funding it, or it's a sort of semi official Ukrainian operation. Unknown: It was funded by private money. It was funded by the businessmen who were there originally when the idea was conceived. So, I mean, you know, the top General and the President didn't really have to do much with the project. This was one of 1000s of projects, and comparatively small one, you know, from a German perspective, from a Western perspective, and in retrospect, it seems huge and important, but to them in the early phase of the war where, you know, the country was on fire, this was just one little thing. And I think the President's involvement was to kind of say yes to it, and then they went ahead. I'm not aware of him being briefed after that, or being involved in any way. At least I have no reporting on that. Freddie Sayers: I mean, that's the first point that, to me, stretches plausibility a little bit. I mean, yes, his country is being invaded, but to greenlight the single most significant piece of infrastructure connecting Russia and Europe, which is 50% owned by Germany, in the midst of this campaign, it's not a little thing to say yes to. I think no matter how busy he was, Zelensky would have realized the implications of this would have been very significant. Unknown: Well, it is. It is, if you're Ukrainian, and if you put yourself in his shoes, it's completely insignificant. I mean, to you, it's the single most, biggest piece of infrastructure. But for them, their pipeline is the most important infrastructure. You know, there is a pipeline system going through Ukraine that channels oil and gas to this very day, from Russia to Europe, and the Ukrainians are getting very lucrative transit fees on that energy trade. So essentially, by removing, you know, by removing Nord Stream, that's pretty much the only it's not the only country. There's another sort of pipeline system coming from the south through the Black Sea, but the main pipeline system now is the pipeline system going through Ukraine. So I don't know exactly, overall in there's a financial motive. Could I just, I'm, I have no idea whether that was part of the motivation, but there is just a fact of life that there is this system, or a kind of a very complex system of oil and gas pipelines, and that the Ukrainians we, I mean, the exact amounts are secret, that they're estimated to be billions, pro, you know, pro anim, you know, annual fees, you know, going up to billions. And Freddie Sayers: do we know about these mysterious businessmen that you're talking about, whether any of them are connected to the oil industry by chance? Is there any chance that one of the backers of this project would have benefited from its successful execution. Unknown: Well, not that I'm aware, but I can't also exclude it. So I don't really know. I mean business interests in Ukraine, that's very complicated topic. So I wouldn't be able to tell to me Freddie Sayers: it makes it more plausible, rather than the less plausible to Western is this whole concept of a kind of semi privatized, entrepreneurial military endeavor that is quasi official, but funded by some mysterious businessman. Sounds pretty dodgy and pretty weird. But are you saying that in the Ukrainian context, it might sound less unusual. Unknown: Oh, it's absolutely standard. In the Ukrainian context, that's what they've been doing throughout the war. And when I say throughout the war, I mean going back to 2014 Well, I was there when the kind of war broke out, and the initial, the first line of defense, or attack, if you will, were privately funded Italians. You know, the army was at the time, they couldn't afford boots for their troops. So essentially, you had the kind of the Iron Fist of the then military forces of Ukraine were entirely privately funded battalions. So this is, this has a long tradition in Ukraine, you know, and it continues to this very day, I mean. And also the, you know, kind of Daredevil not really thought through operations are pretty much the trademark of Ukraine across the board. I mean, if you look at the most recent thing that's in the news, it's the Kursk offensive. You know, they went into Russia. So how that unfolded was, first they sent the tank, and then they went back and they saw nothing happened, and send two tanks, and then all of a sudden, they send 1000 men, 800 to 1000 men. So you have to understand, with 800 to 1000 men, they're holding a huge sort of chunk of Russian territory, this nuclear superpower, and I think about 80 settlements, villages and towns are now. They're entirely under Ukrainian control. These 800 men have taken. All this territory on a whim, you know? And there's no kind of profound strategy behind that. There's no, like, elaborate tactical deliberation. They just kind of went in and did it, and I'm not even sure they have a plan what to do with it, to be honest. But that, obviously, that's not a topic. But I'm just trying to illustrate how they operate. So, you know, yeah, what you say, it's, I mean, me, it was, it was extremely weird when I started finding out how this unfolded, and the first time I found out about the boat and the boat crew and about the kind of modus operandi, was not from the Ukrainians, it was from Western investigators, which are much more kind of plausible sources. In that regard, they have established beyond doubt that the boat was behind sabotage. The German investigation, we started from scratch, and now, in less than two years, has basically established beyond any doubt to the point that they've been issuing now arrest warrants. And in order to issue arrest warrant in Germany on an issue like that, you have to have 100% certainty, you know, the the state, the federal prosecutor, will never accept. You know, this is not like a local district prosecutor. It's like the top prosecutor, which only, who only handles the most important cases of significance to national security. Freddie Sayers: Let's bring us forward on the timeline. Then, so June, by this account, the CIA gives a message, or the, I guess the Americans give a message to Zelensky, put a stop to this, and yet, obviously it goes ahead anyway, the explosions take place in September. What's the explanation for that? Well, Unknown: I don't really have an explanation for that. I mean, either he said, Don't do it, win, win, or he genuinely said, Don't do it. And then the general in charge was like, I don't care. I'll just go ahead and do it anyway. So that wouldn't have been the first time something like that happened. General illusion had said in various interviews that there were times at the beginning of the war in that at that phase of the war in the first half of 2022 when he didn't necessarily have to seek permission from the President, because it was just kind of the hottest phase of the war, and he was making executive decisions. And I think that was also a time when the President wasn't interfering with his generals. That's also very important to remember now he is interfering. He has been interfering with generals for a while now, but in the very first phase of the war, he was not interfering with military kind of commanders. And so why they did it? Why they disregarded his order? How severe was his actual order? I have no way of knowing. Freddie Sayers: We also know that the general in charge, who supposedly continued to execute it, has now been made Ukrainian ambassador to this country, to the UK which kind of indicates that he's not exactly on the naughty step. He hasn't been imprisoned for defying the orders of his commander in chief. He's, in fact, been promoted to one of their top diplomatic positions. Unknown: Well, he wasn't promoted. He was fired. General zaluzhnyi was was relieved of duty, and not by his own volition. He was gotten rid of by Zelensky, and then they had to do something with him. And it's a complicated story. I don't want to go into it, but he was made Ambassador because he had to be taken out of you know the equation, but certainly that was not his his own desire. He would have remained a commander, and he would have been fighting the war. And I think he probably would have been fighting the war in a very different fashion than what we're seeing now, had he not been replaced. But he was basically fired. Freddie Sayers: Oh, just to push back for one second. There's another character in your report called Roman chavinsky, who is a decorated colonel who was previously one of the top intelligence officers in Ukraine. He is now on trial in Ukraine. There's lots of senior people that zelenskyy has taken to task if he was really upset that zaluni had defied his order and carried out this piece of sabotage. There's no reason why he couldn't have prosecuted him, put him in prison. Unknown: I don't think anyone will be prosecutor put in prison for Nord Stream that that would mean, you know, they would admission of guilt. I don't think something that that's just never going to happen. And I think also, also one thing which is very interesting to perhaps, for your viewers to know, is that everyone I spoke to who was in on the plot or like directly participating, they said that they should be given medals. And I don't think they are kind of being sarcastic about it. They are absolutely convinced that they should be given medals. And I think that would be the public sentiment. If, if you were to kind of announce the names of the participants in this plot and put in, put it on, on, like public television in Ukraine, people will just think they're heroes, that that's, that's, that's, that would be the only effect, so putting someone on trial for having blown up the the Russia. Russia, German Pipeline would not, would not, you know, help the ratings of any, any politician trying to do that. Okay, I'm Freddie Sayers: very keen to get to the actual details of what they did, but I have one further come challenge to throw at you before we get there. If it's possible that President Zelensky said no, but Wink, wink, which seems completely plausible, if public opinion is as you say it is, this shouldn't, absolutely must not go ahead. But of course, it may be too late to change it, or whatever. Is it not also possible that the American administration said to Zelensky in the same way, this must not go ahead, but wink wink, if it's too late, we understand, because, as we have record, people like Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, were very hostile to the pipeline and didn't want it to be there in the first place. So you know, those so called conspiracy theorists who believe the Seymour Hersh version of events, or some something similar, that the Americans actually gave permission for this to take place, that's plausible, isn't it? Unknown: No, it's not. That's not how the American system works. That's, you know, Victoria Nuland. I mean, come on, the pipeline was, was, was opposed by every single president ever since Bush, I think, or certainly since Obama, most definitely, all of them are on the record. Their national security that buys us on the record, the entire American system, going back years, has been opposing it, and that's been the case in other countries too. But when Joe Biden said we will stop the pipeline, he meant we will stop it with sanctions. They don't need to blow it up. America can stop anything it wants in the commercial realm with a stroke of a pen. And so, you know, it's kind of completely delusional to think that the president of America, CNA, seen out, though he may be, would be talking about blowing up a pipeline on live television. You know, he basically meant we will just put sanctions on it and destroy it. And in fact, I know for a fact that the CIA, when he came into office, did brief him on the pipeline, and they gave him three options, and one of the options, which they preferred, was to just kill it with sanctions, kill the pipeline with sanctions, and be done with it. And that's what they would have done. They would have never blown it up. It's completely it's just absurd that these things don't really happen in this context. The German investigators have proven that the both full of Ukrainians blew up the pipelines, and that's it. They have and I have been able to understand some of their evidence. How shall I put it? So I'm absolutely convinced. But moreover, they are absolutely convinced. They certainly entertained the theory that America could be behind it, just as well Russia could be behind it. And within two years of painstaking investigation, they dismissed both theories as completely implausible. Just Freddie Sayers: one final attempt on this, because I know that a lot of viewers will feel skeptical about this. You know anyone who tends towards a kind of anti American predisposition, or indeed, people who consider themselves sophisticated realists who know how the world really works, they are busy saying that this whole version of events is not plausible. They dismiss it as the kind of five men and then a little assistant going in a sailing boat fantasy, which conveniently absolves the US of even tacitly approving it. And now, because Zelensky himself has pushed the blame further down the hierarchy, it absolves Zelensky as well. So it's a very convenient outcome that apparently involves no state actors, and it's even been briefed to you, presumably by people who are involved. You've actually gone to a reporter for The Wall Street Journal to tell the story. The whole thing, to that kind of cynic might sound like a convenient outcome that leaves nobody in trouble. Unknown: They haven't gone to me. I've spent two years investigating this, and I'm pretty good at what I'm doing, as you can, you know, if you go back and read my stuff going back 20 years. So you know, no one, no one's volunteered any information. I've had to extract this information like pulling teeth, and I'm not going to go into the methods, but certainly nobody ever volunteered this information, and nobody's excused. Zelensky did approve it in a court of law. I don't think they will make any difference what we're discussing here. There won't be a court of law. I can't imagine, but I'm just saying the state actor is Ukraine. There's no There's no doubt about that. The funding and the team and whatever the state actors from Ukraine were behind what happened, and this is what is believed by investigators who are investigating the case and have already issued an arrest warrant. So I think that you know, we have to go back to the basics. Who knows the most about this? The people who are investigating and they have resources that you and I do not have, including vast intelligence apparatus, including satellites, electronic surveillance, phone surveillance, emails, what have you DNA testing hair from the suspects which they have, fingerprints and whatnot, and traces of the explosives. So they've got all this, and they've become convinced, plausibly, that it is Ukraine behind this. They know the identities of the people, etc, etc. So it's not theoretical or academic, you know, like, oh, it was Norway with a kind of, you know, this is completely ridiculous. The people who investigate this have come to a conclusion, and I'm privy to some of their conclusions, and I've reported them. That's all I can say. Let's Freddie Sayers: finally now get to the tale itself, because it is the story of how they carried out. Really does sound like a either like a James Bond movie or sort of Oceans 11 or something this, this intrepid group, tell us what they did after they were either forbidden or not forbidden, from proceeding by high command in Ukraine in June, what happens next? So Unknown: in June, they sought to rent a boat in Sweden, in South Sweden, and then when the mission was temporarily aborted, or rather kind of they had to regroup. So they decided then to launch the attack on the pipeline from Germany itself, which is quite ironic, and I guess they had had a bit of fun with that whole thing. So then they crossed from from Ukraine into Poland, from Poland into Germany. They rented out the boat for a fairly standard price. They prior to doing that, they obviously practice a little bit. They're all experienced divers. One of them has over 20 years of diving experience, the other one has over 15 years. They're all deep sea divers. All but one are skilled in using reeders. So it's a pretty competent bunch in terms of diving itself. And two of them, the skipper and the navigator, were military men, and one of them, one of the military men, was able to handle the explosives, and they read, there's a little detail about the boat itself that I remember from your report. Is that the tourist company or that arranged the rental, is that itself a kind of Ukrainian intelligence fake company. That's right, it's been, it's been around for about a decade, going back to, I think, to the to the first, first invasion of Russia, and it's been used as a front for for Ukrainian intelligence. It's changed hands multiple times. It's very obscure, and it's basically just being used as a vehicle to for the money transfer. Essentially, someone from Ukraine called up the company, arranged the deal. They were going back and forth on emails and things, and then when the time came, the money transfer was made through this company, which was headquartered in Warsaw. Freddie Sayers: So they finally get their hands on a boat in the shape of the Andromeda, which is a 55 foot sailing vessel meant for pleasure cruising. I guess what happens? They get on it and they head for Denmark. Well, no Unknown: first two of the two military men picked up the boat in a port near Rostock, the German port city. Then they sailed to a smaller port, which is called Vik and that's where the divers got on board with their whole equipment and a bunch of supplies. And then from there on, they went up towards the island of Bornholm, which is Danish, Danish possession. They laid some of the mines during that trip. Then there was a very big storm that kind of blew them all the way up to South Sweden, and they had to make an unplanned pit stop in a Swedish port. I can't really pronounce the name, so I want but it's written in my article. It's sunham. Freddie Sayers: I can help you there, as a Swede San ham is what Aritz pronounced. So you said they planted some of the mines. What is the mechanics of that on Unknown: the Norse in one pipeline? Yeah, Freddie Sayers: when what actually happens? So do you do they need to go down as a group? How deep is it? What are they carrying? How do they attach them to the pipelines? How does that actually happen? It's Unknown: very straightforward. It's it's around 80 meters deep, a bit less, a bit more. Perhaps it's around 80 meters deep. And they kind of, they they have all the locations from from an open source. It's fairly easy to find where the pipeline is, and they use a portable sonner to get the exact location. Then they would go down in pairs. So they worked two fibers would go one down one day, then have a little post, and the next day that the other couple would go down. And they. I essentially attach the mines, which are, I think, magnetic to the to the surface with a with a timer. It's a time bomb, essentially. And they use this explosives called hmx, which is a fairly standard, very powerful explosive, very light, very stable, not too dangerous to handle. Well, if you know what you're doing, obviously. Freddie Sayers: So the time bombs, they're not actually remote detonation devices. Then, no, no, once, Unknown: once you've, once you triggered them, then you better get the hell out of dodge. So it's, it's, it can't be stopped afterwards. Freddie Sayers: So how did they not explode at different points? Then, if they laid the two sets of mines on different days. Why were they not too separate? Unknown: They did explode the interestingly, the mines that were laid the last exploded the first. I don't really know what that is. Nobody knows, but first they mined Nord Stream one, and then something happened. So they had to make bizarre detour and go all the way down south, if viewers picture the map of the of the Baltic Sea, that Bornholm is sort of up north in the middle. And then they had to go down overnight. They sailed the whole night without stopping to the Polish port of koberg, and then they spend the day there, and then they kind of went back up for whatever reason. It's not clear why they did that, perhaps to pick up some supplies. Perhaps there was a medical emergency, it's not clear. And interestingly, they they were ID by police in that port, because the port master heard them speak Russian or Ukrainian. It was quite suspicious, so he called the police, and the border police ID them. They produced European Union ID cards from Bulgaria, and they were allowed to continue. And so when there Freddie Sayers: was a Ukrainian flag on the boat. Is that right? Can that possibly be not at that time, Unknown: the Ukrainian flag was up in in Sweden, okay, I think at the time, well, I don't know, but I, I have no idea whether it was in Poland, but certainly it was when they were Sun hub. There was a tiny little Ukraine flag attached, yeah, just, it's a silly detail, obviously, but it kind of gets to the weirdly amateurish nature of this. Freddie Sayers: Why on earth would there be a Ukrainian flag on this like deeply undercover operation? Unknown: I had no idea. The witnesses told police that they saw a tiny, little Ukrainian flag flapping around on the boat, and the witnesses kind of took a pretty good look at the suspect, because they were stuck in the port for a while because of the storm. There were other other sailors there, and by pure coincidence, some German sailors as well, which was quite convenient for the German investigators. Germans in the in the kind of Northern Baltic are in the in the northern coast of Germany, are quite keen sailors in that part of the world. So from sandam, where they take refuge during this storm, they then make a second trip out to the pipeline and lay a second set of mines. That's what's presumed to have happened. And then they went down to Poland, and then they went up from Poland, and that's where they put the mines onto North Street two. And those mines, which relate last in a chronological sense, blew up the first in the small hours of September 26 I think two or three in the morning. And then when did the other set detonate? Around 17 hours later, what Freddie Sayers: happens then? Are they still in the vicinity when the explosions take place? Do we know that? No, Unknown: they had already, they already left the boat, and they were on their well on their way back home. So they immediately, after having attached the mines to Nord Stream two, which was the final stage of this thing. They they went back to FIK, which is the one of the German ports. They Morden. And there the divers disembarked and went about their business. And the two military people brought the yacht back to the original port, the port of origin, and then from there the left. Freddie Sayers: Do we know? Are they still alive? Are they still retained by the Ukrainian state? Obviously, some of them, oh, yeah, Unknown: they're alive. I just spoke to one of them recently. Yeah, they're very much alive and very much in good health and good humor. Freddie Sayers: To get to the end of the story. Is there anything else we need to know about what what you believe happened? Unknown: Well, what we know from the German police and now from the Polish prosecutors is that one of them actually resided in the suburbs of Paul of Warsaw with his family, wife and three children. So he. Didn't actually while the entire crew left Poland and went up back to Ukraine, he actually remained with his family, so he was there until arrest warrant was issued for his arrest on June the 21st this year, and the Polish authorities initially confirmed that they had received this arrest warrant and then sort of just ignored it. They told the Germans that their internal security service had to have a look at it first, which is according to the Germans, at least, and some lawyers I've spoken to, certainly not the procedure, and it's not even legal in European law, this arrest warrant is a so called European arrest warrant is part of an it's an EU mechanism that needs to be executed automatically when you receive, as a prosecutor in a European country and such an arrest warrant from Another European Union country, your duty is to arrest the suspect if you if you are aware of their whereabouts. In this case, they were the Germans even listed the address of the suspect. So the Polish kind of refused to execute that. And then the matter was escalated to political level. German politicians spoke to Polish politicians. The Polish politicians refused to commit and then the suspect just went up back to Ukraine. His family was left behind and he escaped, so he's now safe and sound in Ukraine, and the Germans were left sitting on their arrest warrant. Someone Freddie Sayers: is preventing this arrest taking place. Do you think this is a Polish defense? I mean, we know, for example, that Radek Sikorski, back in the day, it was another one of these moments that got everyone very excited. Tweeted, thank you USA. And in the days after the pipeline was destroyed, there are a lot of people in the Polish establishment who were happy to see the pipeline destroyed. Do you think it's, it's sort of Polish interests protecting this person, or do you think it is a call from someone in Ukraine? Or how, how could it possibly be that the arrests didn't actually take place when they come literally, from German officials? Unknown: I would want to speculate. But what I will say is that some days later, after my report came out, and after there was kind of a huge controversy in the media about what had happened and what was happening, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk issued a post on X, formerly twitter, on Saturday, and he basically said to I can't remember the exact formulation, but he said to all those who supported and promoted Nord Stream one and two, now's the time for you to be quiet and apologize. So that was a scene as a huge affront in Germany, it was seen as a huge, I mean, a very unorthodox, undiplomatic move there on behalf of the Polish Prime Minister, who is interestingly seen as a kind of a more liberal, more pro European, more more conciliatory figure in this German Polish relationship. So essentially, he told him to shut up. And I think they got the message latest by then. I mean, of course they had gotten the message prior to that, because nothing happened with their arrest warrant despite pushing at all levels. But then the prime minister of Poland himself decided to kind of pile in, and he basically said Germany should be quiet, stop sending arrest warrants and just apologize for having done business with Vladimir Putin. So make of that what you will. I can only speculate as well as you can, but it's, I think, pretty obvious, that Poland will not be acting on arrest warrants from Germany. In this matter, it would appear if, if, if the statements of the Prime Minister is anything to go by. And by the way, interestingly, in response to that post, the National Security Advisor of the president, who is a member of the opposition party. So obviously, he's a great critic of the Prime Minister and of the ruling coalition. His name is siatric schiebera. He posted in response immediately, he said, and in this we have a heart. I forget the formation, but we have a hard consensus in Poland, you know, trying to signal the opposition hates the prime minister on all issues, but on this issue, we stand together. So it's quite extraordinary. Freddie Sayers: You could say that, rather than this episode showing how kind of united in a beautiful conspiracy all of the powers are, in a way, it shows how divided they are and how within Europe you have Poland and Ukraine really taking a very different view to Germany, which is the biggest economy in Europe on this central question. I mean, in the last few days, we've seen Sarah Wagen connect and. An increasingly popular politician, formerly of Die Linke, who now has her own party, really capitalizing on this story as a source of division, taking public sentiment away from supporting Ukraine. Unknown: I think what you said about Sarah Bagnet is absolutely correct. She's been able to capitalize on the story so far, and certainly she will be capitalizing on these tweets, war of words, you know, from the from the Polish Prime Minister, equally so the ifd, the alternative of Deutschland, the Alternative for Germany, which is a kind of far right opposition party. Zarbagnet, is kind of far left National Party, and they're the far right National Party. Both of them will be capitalizing on this, and they are already. And obviously, there is an election in September and Thuringia, which is a small kind of federal state of Germany, and in kind of central eastern region, and both of these parties are projected to do extremely well, whether or not this episode will boost their their share of the vote remains to be seen, but certainly, it's unlikely to damage their prospects. If anything, it's likely to Freddie Sayers: help a final question for you, Boyan, the sheer bizarreness of this whole story, and the sort of amateurishness, and if you're telling of it is accurate, the whole the lack of authority from the various nation states involved. It's just a very extraordinary sequence of events. What have you learned from studying it? Unknown: I mean, it's a very multi layered learning experience. I think you know, there are probably some moral lessons for German and Western policy in the long run, which I wouldn't necessarily go into now as a journalist, but I think you know this private, private sort of, you know private public partnership that this thing was, and it was, in fact, described in those words by one of the participants, is something we are increasingly seeing by all sorts of state actors. I mean, the United States have been using private companies to conduct warfare for a pretty long time. Russia learned from that. Russia was watching the American experience in Afghanistan and Iran, and then set up groups like Wagner, which is, I think, quite well known, but there are many other groups, like Wagner, which are not that well known, and they are a private public partnership, very much in the same way this tiny little operation was in Ukraine, then you have, you know, you have Russia now interfering in Europe since the war started in with sabotage and spionage operations, some of them pretty, pretty significant. I reported, for example, that they helped blow up a major factory on the outskirts of Berlin. You know, that was, that was a kind of a Russian sabotage. There are other, many other examples. And they also use, in many of these instances, they use non professional actors. They hire people, sometimes without their knowledge. They hire them on social media. They give them money to do a job, to kind of set something on fire, or to do, you know, so this is increasingly, what we're seeing is that a lot of actually state actors, including pretty serious ones like the United States and Russia and certainly Israel, has been doing this as well. Is, you know, is something that has proven, is time tested. You know, it's proven to be extremely efficient. I mean, there is plausible deniability. You can get rid of them if necessary, if they get arrested, which we have seen in Poland has arrested, and the Czech Republic has arrested a bunch of Russian saboteurs who are not Russian, and they didn't even necessarily knew, know that they were working for Russia, but they were paid to do a job. So these things happen, you know. And I think it's this particular operation is to be seen in that light. I mean, it was pretty, you know, it was pretty haphazard. It was pretty kind of crazy, you know. But this is how the Ukrainians are. This is how they've been waging this war. And anyone who's spent any time in Ukraine dealing with these issues will recognize this as a fairly kind of standard thing that that they've been doing. And I think again, I have to impress upon the audience, just look into the news about the Kursk offensive. Go back three, four weeks, how it started, how it's going. It's completely, you know, it's exactly the same way of operating, you know, each kind of you know, you go, you go, step by step, and all of a sudden, then you do something pretty important without perhaps having thought through the ramifications of of what's what's being planned and what's being executed. To me, Freddie Sayers: that sounds more scary, not less scary, than the fast conspiracy that is being perfectly organized by great powers. If it's a sort of improvised chaos, I'm not sure. I'm very reassured by that. Sometimes Unknown: we assume there's like a grown up in the cockpit. But I would caution against that assumption. You know, never assume competence, not in the West. You. Not in Russia. I don't know how things are in China and these rising powers in the east, but I've in my experience in the west and in Russia, which I know fairly well. I don't think we should assume competence at any stage of the policy process. Bojan Freddie Sayers: panchski, thank you so much for talking to us today. My great pleasure. Thank you. Our thanks to Boyan panjew. You heard it there from him. He is the chief European political correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. He's been looking into this for years, and he, as you could hear, is very confident that his first version of events, as detailed in that report, is the closest one we have to the truth if he's right or if he's just mostly right. It means that both groups, the one who was absolutely convinced it was Russia blowing up this pipeline, the other absolutely convinced that it was the US, were both, at least largely wrong, and to me, it's a reminder just to retain some humility, retain some modesty when interpreting these fast paced events and not everything, even though it might be convenient fits your previous theory. Our thanks to Boyan panjeski, and thank you to you for joining this was unherd. You.