Eight months after the Russian invasion, a team of Ukrainian divers attached explosives to the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that would transfer natural gas from Russia to central Europe, a potential financial windfall for the Kremlin, and intelligence agencies in the US and Europe knew about the planned attack for months, new reporting from the Washington Post based on documents leaked in the Discord disclosure shows.
The perpetrators of the attack had not been identified publically, but in April 2022, two months after the Russian invasion, US intelligence officials learned from counterparts in a European country about the Ukrainian goal of disabling the pipelines. The European agency learned of the attacks from a single source who reported that the operation was being overseen by the highest levels of Ukrainian military and civilian officials. Neither pipelines were in operation, but they were filled with pressurized gas at the time of the September 26th attack, which left three of the four conduits in the system damaged.
Widely criticized for threatening the energy supply for central and western Europe, the attacks were attributed to various sides by pundits. Some believed Russia carried out the attack themselves as a false flag operation, while others proffered that a western nation such as the US conducted the operation to help Ukraine.