[ad_1]
A senior Ukrainian military official under trial in his country for alleged abuse of power coordinated the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, in an operation kept secret from Ukraine’s presidency, people familiar with his role told German and United States media.
Colonel Roman Chervinsky oversaw logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities to plant explosives on the twin pipelines under the Baltic Sea, The Washington Post said in a report for a joint investigation with Der Spiegel, citing people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Owner Nord Stream AG, which is 51 percent held by Russian majority state-owned Gazprom PJSC, first reported the incidents September 26, 2022.
The American newspaper described Chervinsky, 48, as a “decorated” official who “has served in senior positions in the country’s [Ukraine’s] military intelligence agency as well as the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, and he is professionally and personally close to key military and security leaders”.
While he played “coordinator” for the sabotage, he did not plan the operation, the sources were cited as saying. Chervinsky took orders from more senior officials who then reported to Ukraine’s highest military official, General Valery Zaluzhny, according to the sources.
The string of events happened with President Volodymyr Zelensky kept in the dark, the people who spoke to the newspapers said. Zelensky had denied Ukraine was involved in the purported bombing. “I am president and I give orders accordingly,” Zelensky told news organization Politico in an interview published June 7. “Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way”.
The Post characterized the head of state’s relations with the military leadership as troublesome. “Chervinsky’s role illustrates the complex dynamics and internal rivalries of the wartime government in Kyiv, where Ukraine’s intelligence and military establishment is often in tension with its political leadership”, it wrote.
Chervinsky has been held in a Kyiv jail on charges he abused his authority in ordering an operation that resulted in the leaking of information. The operation gave away the coordinates of a Ukrainian airfield, later used by Russia to stage a rocket attack that killed a soldier and injured 17 others, The Post noted.
Chervinsky denied any role in the apparent Nord Stream sabotage, telling the newspapers through his lawyer, “All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis”.
The Post said the Ukrainian government had not responded to questions about Chervinsky’s role in the Nord Stream incidents.
Major-General Viktor Hanushchak, an official to whom Chervinsky reported during his stint with the special operations forces, had already publicly said the operation had been approved by Ukraine’s armed forces, according to The Post. Hanushchak is no longer in the special operations forces, and refused to comment for the story.
“Some of those who described Chervinsky’s participation in the Nord Stream attack defended the veteran intelligence officer as acting in Ukraine’s best interests”, The Post stated. “They argued that bombing the pipelines helped to keep Russia from filling its coffers from natural gas sales and deprived Putin of a means to use the flow of natural gas for political leverage”.
Moscow has been adamant it had nothing to do with the targeting of an asset majority-owned by the Russian state.
The prosecutor overseeing a Swedish probe had acknowledged the “detonations” that hit both Nord Stream pipelines, which partly lie in Swedish and Danish exclusive economic zones, may have been orchestrated by a government.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) said in a press release April 6 “analyses from objects seized during the crime scene investigations show traces of explosives on several of the foreign objects which were examined”. It called the September 2022 incidents “detonations” and said both pipelines one and two had taken a hit.
Mats Ljungqvist, who is overseeing the probe being conducted by the Swedish Security Service as public prosecutor of the National Security Unit, said in the SPA report, “regarding the incident, there is no doubt that this is gross sabotage in international waters directed towards infrastructure”.
“We got a pretty clear picture at the scene of the crime of who carried it out”, Ljungqvist told Russian state media TASS April 10 in comments about Stockholm’s update on the investigation. “It cannot be ruled out that there are some private individuals who may have been the perpetrators. Still, our main lead is, of course, that a government is behind it – directly or indirectly.”
The Danish Energy Agency said March 29 citing Denmark’s Defense Ministry local authorities had recovered an empty smoke buoy near pipeline two with the presence of a Nord Stream AG representative.
Russia has pressed the two Nordic countries, as well as Germany, to allow it to participate in fact-finding missions into the purported attack.
Russia “intended to persist in its effort to compel the authorities in the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany], Denmark and Sweden to conduct an objective and comprehensive investigation into the sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines with the mandatory inclusion of Russia”, said a statement by Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry May 25.
While Nord Stream is majority-owned by Gazprom, France, Germany and the Netherlands invested in the project as a key European access to Russian gas. Germany’s PEGI/E.ON and Wintershall Dea AG own 15.5 percent each. The Netherlands’ N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and France’s ENGIE hold nine percent each.
The two Nord Stream pipelines, stretching a total of 760.56 miles (1,224 kilometers) between exporter Russia and destination Germany, have a combined annual capacity of around 1.94 trillion cubic feet (55 billion cubic meters) of gas, according to the Nord Stream AG website. That capacity is “enough to satisfy the energy demand of more than 26 million European households”, the site says.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
[ad_2]
Source link