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German ex-spy chief: Poland's president involved in the attack

Published 16 August 2024 at 16.07

Foreign. The investigation into the explosion at the Nord Stream gas pipeline has gained new momentum, and now there is information that both Polish President Andrzej Duda and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj may have been involved in the sabotage. Remix News reports.

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The Nord Stream sabotage

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It is August Hanning, former head of the German intelligence service BND, who in an interview with Die Welt made accusations that there was a secret agreement between the two leaders about the attack.

The comment was made before the Wall Street Journal on Thursday published its report in which Ukrainian sources state that Volodymyr Zelensky gave the green light for an attack on the Nord Stream in the Baltic Sea.

The people who carried out the attack are said to have rented a boat from which divers placed explosives along the Nord Stream pipeline. According to the WSJ, the group acted on the orders of President Zelenskyi, who, after the American CIA learned of the plans, tried unsuccessfully to call off the operation.

Hanning accuses Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenskyi of having coordinated the sabotage and suggests that Polish intelligence services provided important support on land.

– I don't think it was just the intelligence services, but rather an agreement between the highest levels of the government in Poland and Ukraine. It is clear that the Ukrainian sabotage team carried out the attack, but only thanks to significant logistical support from Poland. Such decisions are not made at the highest political level, he says.

The former spy chief points out that both Ukraine and Poland had both the motive and capacity to carry out the attack and notes Poland's lack of interest in a thorough investigation, which he interprets as a sign of the country's significant involvement in the affair. Hanning predicts that the German government may demand damages given the serious impact the sabotage had on the country's gas supply and industry.

At the same time, it has emerged that German authorities have arrested a suspect in connection with the Nord Stream- the bombings. The suspect, a professional diver and Ukrainian citizen who last lived in Poland, is now the subject of a European arrest warrant. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Hanning, who led the BND during Gerhard Schröder's time as chancellor – a period when the Nord Stream project began – makes his statements at the same time as several parallel investigations are underway in different countries. Denmark and Sweden have reported that they found traces of explosives on objects found at the scene of the explosion, but both countries have previously announced that they have completed their preliminary investigations.

Ukraine still denies any involvement and instead continues to claim that it was Russia that blew up its own gas pipeline. Russia, for its part, blames Ukraine, Great Britain and the United States.

The neoconservative Polish politician Radek Sikorski “thanked the United States” for the Nord Stream explosion shortly after it happened. Sikorski is today foreign minister in the left-liberal Polish government and the post he wrote on Twitter has since been deleted.