Kyiv knew nothing about a plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, amid growing speculation that Ukraine was behind the blast.
In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper, Zelenskiy said that as president, he had the power to give orders, but that he would “never do that”, referring to the attack on the pipeline.
“I believe that our army and our intelligence services did nothing like that,” he said, adding that he would “like to see proof”.
“We know nothing about it, 100%,” he said.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that a European spy agency told the CIA that it knew of a Ukrainian special operations team’s plan to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipeline – and that the Biden administration was briefed on the matter.
The tip-off came three months before explosions damaged the undersea system last year, the report said.
The Washington Post cited US intelligence allegedly leaked earlier this year by a low-level US Air National Guard computer technician who had access to large amounts of highly classified materials.
The leaked documents indicated that an unnamed European intelligence body told the US spy agency in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine military divers reporting directly to the country’s military commander-in-chief were planning the attack.
The six-person team reported directly to General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the report claimed, so that president Volodymyr Zelenskiy would not know about the operation.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany, were rocked by underwater explosions on 26 September, rendering them useless and cutting off a potential source of billions of dollars in earnings for Russia.
The apparent sabotage sparked a region-wide emergency as it cut off crucial supplies of energy for Europe just as the war had sent the price of oil skyrocketing.
Accusations were made against several countries including Russia, the United States and Ukraine, but all denied responsibility.