Lekkasje på Nord Stream 2

[jallajall]

Now, for the first time, the outlines of the real story can be told. The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise.

The Journal spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia.

Portions of their account were corroborated by a nearly two-year German police investigation into the attack, which has obtained evidence including email, mobile and satellite phones communications, as well as fingerprints and DNA samples from the alleged sabotage team.

One crew member, a military officer on active duty who was fighting in the war, was a seasoned skipper, and four were experienced deep-sea divers, people familiar with the German investigation said. The crew included civilians, one of whom was a woman in her 30s who had trained privately as a diver. She was handpicked for her skills but also to lend more plausibility to the crew’s disguise as friends on holiday, according to one person familiar with the planning.

Investigators later identified their mobile phone numbers and their Iridium satellite phone. That data allowed them to reconstruct the entire journey of the boat, which moored in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. U.S. authorities sought a court order to obtain from Google the emails a Ukrainian businessman used to lease the boat, and handed them over to the Germans. That Ukrainian businessman had contacted a number of boat rental firms in Sweden as well as in Germany, starting from mid-May 2022.

“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” said a senior German official familiar with the probe.

Ukraine has a long history of training top civilian and military divers. A naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in the past trained deep-sea divers for the purposes of sabotage and demining. It also kept combat dolphins trained to attack enemy divers and blow up ships, according to two senior Ukrainian officers.

[Kahuna]

jallajall skrev (1 time siden):

Ukraine has a long history of training top civilian and military divers. A naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in the past trained deep-sea divers for the purposes of sabotage and demining

Med vekt på 'historie'. Har noen Ukrainere trent der siden 2014 tror du?

[jallajall]

26 minutes ago, Kahuna said:

Med vekt på 'historie'. Har noen Ukrainere trent der siden 2014 tror du?

"The base was taken over by Russia after it occupied Crimea, and some of its staff moved elsewhere in Ukraine."

[Kahuna]

jallajall skrev (13 minutter siden):

"The base was taken over by Russia after it occupied Crimea, and some of its staff moved elsewhere in Ukraine."

Poenget er at den type trening er ferskvare. 8 år uten adgang til fasilitene betyr at alle ukrainere som gikk der kan kalle seg 'tidligere dypvannsdykkere'.

[jallajall]

11 minutes ago, Kahuna said:

Poenget er at den type trening er ferskvare. 8 år uten adgang til fasilitene betyr at alle ukrainere som gikk der kan kalle seg 'tidligere dypvannsdykkere'.

Trening generelt er jo ferskvare, men trening på dypvannssabotasje fører jo også til kompetanse og erfaring som ikke blir borte over natta. Poenget var nok uansett bare å vise at Ukraiana har en viss historie med specialops.
Det refereres også til en tildligere plan om sprenge rørledningen, men som ikke ble gjennomført nå da den var for dyr og komplisert til å gjennomføre.

 

 

Endret 15. august av jallajall