Kyiv: European and US intelligence officials have obtained tentative intelligence to suggest a pro-Ukrainian saboteur group may have been behind the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, according to reports in the New York Times and German newspaper Die Zeit, The Guardian reported.
German investigators believe the attack on the pipelines was carried out by a team of six people, using a yacht that had been hired by a company registered in Poland and owned by two Ukrainian citizens, according to Die Zeit.
The information has been shared between European intelligence agencies in an effort to establish more information about those who carried out the undersea bombings in September, an attack that had left western governments perplexed, The Guardian reported.
Details about the intelligence remain sketchy and it is unclear what confidence the US intelligence community places in the theory, as well as who may have organised, funded and directed such a daring attack on the gas pipelines running between Russia and Germany. But it is suggested that the government of Kyiv did not direct the underwater strike.
Russia said it wanted an independent international inquiry to be set up in response to the report. Its deputy envoy to the UN said Moscow would call for a vote at the UN security council on whether to launch one.
The attack took place in international waters in the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm, with large amounts of gas rising up from the sea floor, The Guardian reported.
Six people were involved in the operation to transport explosives to the site, including the yacht’s captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor. All six were understood to have used professionally faked passports, said Die Zeit, with their real identities still unclear.
The yacht set sail from the German port city of Rostock on September 6, 2022. The equipment for the secret operation was previously transported to the port in a delivery truck, according to Die Zeit. After its return, investigators found traces of explosives on one of the tables inside the hired vessel, The Guardian reported.
–IANS