A decorated officer in the Ukrainian military with "deep ties" to the country's intelligence services "played a central role" and was the "coordinator" of the attack last year on the Nord Stream natural-gas pipeline, The Washington Post reported on November 11.
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The report alleged that 48-year-old Special Forces Colonel Roman Chervinskiy "took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to General Valeriy Zaluzhniy," who is Ukraine's top-ranking officer.
It quoted Ukrainian and European officials and "other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation."
The Washington Post said that, through an attorney, Chervinskiy had rejected accusations that he was involved in the sabotage.
The explosive charges that were detonated on the pipeline in September 2022 caused massive leaks and were seen as a dangerous attack on European infrastructure a half-year into Russia's full-scale invasion.
Western officials initially blamed Russia for the blasts, which all but destroyed the twin pipelines. Moscow blamed the United States and its allies saying it had no reason for blowing up an energy link vital to bringing its supplies westward.
Nord Stream is majority-owned by Russia's Gazprom and supplies millions of Europeans with gas.
It was seen as a major effort by Moscow to bypass Ukraine in the transit west of Russian gas.
The United States had warned for years that the pipelines were a security risk for Germany and other European nations, making the countries’ beholden to Russian energy exports.
In July, investigators trying to solve the unexplained blasts that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea said they had found traces of undersea explosives on a German yacht linked to the incident.
The revelations, announced by Danish, German, and Swedish diplomats in a letter dated July 10, were a small but noteworthy development in the continuing mystery of the destruction of the gas pipeline, which occurred September 26, 2022, on the Baltic seabed, east of the Danish island of Bornholm.
The explosions were discovered as residual gas bubbled up to the surface.
The pipelines were built by Russia to bring its gas directly to Germany, and Europe, bypassing Ukraine, Poland, and other nations that had hostile ties with Moscow. While the first pipeline was operational, the second had not gotten final approval from German regulators.
“All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis,” The Washington Post quoted Chervinskiy as saying in a written statement to it and Der Spiegel.
There have been further attacks on energy and other infrastructure since the Nord Stream incidents as the 20-month-old invasion has continued.
Last month, Finland said it couldn't exclude that a "state actor" was responsible for more recent damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea days earlier.