Ukrainian top official denies Ukraine's involvement in Nord Stream sabotage

Podolyak said this in a comment to Reuters.

"Ukraine has nothing to do with the Nord Stream explosions," Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine did not gain any strategic or tactical advantage from the blasts.

Instead, he said that Russia was involved in the explosions on the Nord Stream pipeline.

"Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources ... and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia," Podolyak said as part of his written comments.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Ukrainian officials were involved in the bombings. According to the publication, the operation was led by the then Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave his consent to its conduct.

However, according to the WSJ, when American intelligence learned about this, it asked Zelensky to stop the preparations. The president, in turn, allegedly ordered Zaluzhnyi to stop the operation, but the general ignored the order, explaining that the sabotage group was left without communication after departure.

What is known about the Nord Stream explosions

On the night of September 26, 2022, a sudden drop in pressure occurred in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. On September 27, it became known that gas from the Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline had leaked into the Baltic Sea on the eve of the launch of the Baltic Sea pipeline.

Experts have found that a man-made explosion with a capacity of about 700 kg of TNT equivalent occurred on the routes of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea on September 26. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called the incident a sabotage.

Media in the United States and Germany investigated the Nord Stream accident, seeing it as a trace of pro-Ukrainian forces, but officials in the countries and NATO advised to wait for the results of the investigation. The President's Office denied Ukraine's involvement.

On August 14, the German General Prosecutor's Office issued the first arrest warrant for a Ukrainian in the case of the Nord Stream gas pipeline attack. The suspect is currently being sought.

Deputy spokesman for the German Federal Government Wolfgang Büchner says that the results of the investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline will not harm relations between Kyiv and Berlin.