According to The Wall Street Journal, four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who were involved in the plot or had direct knowledge of it said the pipelines were a legitimate target of Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia.
In June, German prosecutors quietly issued the first arrest warrant for a Ukrainian professional diving instructor for his alleged involvement in the case. The German investigation is now focused on Zaluzna and his aides, although they have no evidence to present in court, the sources said.
The head of the mission was an active general with experience in special operations. He was directly subordinated to V. Zalužna. A few days later, V. Zelenskiy approved the plan. All agreements were made verbally, but the following month the MIVD, the Dutch military intelligence agency, learned of the plot and alerted the CIA, according to several sources. US officials immediately informed Germany.
The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation. The President of Ukraine ordered V. Zaluzhny to cancel all plans, but the general ignored the order and his team changed the original plan.
After the bombings, V. Zelensky got angry and summoned V. Zaluzhna to a meeting, but the general rejected his criticism. He told Zelensky that once the sabotage team was sent, there was no contact with it and it could not be canceled because any contact with it could undermine the operation.
“V. Zelensky was told that it’s like a torpedo – once you launch it at the enemy, you can’t stop it, it flies until it hits,” said a senior officer familiar with the conversation.
General V. Zaluzhn, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, told the publication that he was not aware of any such operation and that any claims to the contrary were “the simplest provocation.” He added that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not authorized to carry out foreign missions, so they do not participate in them.
A high-ranking SBU official also denied his government’s involvement in the sabotage, saying that Mr. Zelensky primarily “did not approve of such actions on the territory of third countries and did not give the relevant orders.”
“Union” inf.
2024-08-16 09:21:56