MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/. Former top Ukrainian military commander Valery Zaluzhny has denied media reports that he had organized the sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines against the decision of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier, the newspaper said that Zelensky personally approved the operation to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines, but then allegedly refused to carry it out under pressure from the CIA. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Zaluzhny, who was the top Ukrainian military commander at the time, continued to work on preparing and carrying out the sabotage.
In response to the newspaper's inquiry, Zaluzhny said that the accusations against him were a "mere provocation." According to him, the Ukrainian armed forces were not authorized to conduct overseas missions, and "he therefore wouldn’t have been involved."
In February, Zelensky fired Zaluzhny from his post as Ukraine's top military commander. The general was later appointed ambassador to London. The reason for the resignation was Zaluzhny's presidential ambitions, a number of Ukrainian media said, as well as the failure of Ukraine's so-called offensive in 2023.
Earlier, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported, citing a joint investigation by the ARD TV channel and the Die Zeit newspaper, that German prosecutors had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor suspected of having played a role in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines. According to the newspaper, he had recently been living in Poland, having gone into hiding. The German prosecutor's office, the newspaper said, suspects two other Ukrainian diving instructors of involvement in the Nord Streams sabotage, among them there is a woman. It is believed that all three may have been part of the Andromeda yacht crew, which is the focus of the German investigation. The vessel may have been used to deliver explosives to the pipelines.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office initiated a criminal case on charges of international terrorism.