nord stream explosion yacht

Investigators skeptical of yacht’s role in Nord Stream bombing

Officials believe more than one vessel might have been involved in sabotaging the natural gas pipeline last year and wonder if a 50-foot sailing yacht that investigators scoured for clues could be a decoy.

After saboteurs severely damaged the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last September, German officials zeroed in on a rented sailboat that appeared to have taken part in planting explosive devices deep below the surface of the Baltic Sea.

But after months of investigation, law enforcement officials now suspect that the 50-foot yacht, the Andromeda, was probably not the only vessel used in the audacious attack. They also say the boat may have been a decoy, put to sea to distract from the true perpetrators, who remain at large, according to officials with knowledge of an investigation led by Germany’s attorney general. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details about the active inquiry, including doubts about the Andromeda’s role that haven’t been previously reported.

Officials hope that the true purpose of Andromeda in the deep-sea demolition will provide further insight in a high-stakes, international whodunnit that could eventually lead to those responsible and explain their motives, which remain unclear.

U.S. and European officials said they still don’t know for sure who is behind the underwater attack. But several said they shared German skepticism that a crew of six people on one sailboat laid the hundreds of pounds of explosives that disabled Nord Stream 1 and part of Nord Stream 2, a newer set of pipelines that wasn’t yet delivering gas to customers.

Experts noted that while it was theoretically possible to place the explosives on the pipeline by hand, even skilled divers would be challenged submerging more than 200 feet to the seabed and slowly rising to the surface to allow time for their bodies to decompress.

Such an operation would have taken multiple dives, exposing the Andromeda to detection from nearby ships. The mission would have been easier to hide and pull off using remotely piloted underwater vehicles or small submarines, said diving and salvage experts who have worked in the area of the explosion, which features rough seas and heavy shipping traffic.

The German investigation has determined that traces of “military-grade” explosives found on a table inside the boat’s cabin match the batch of explosives used on the pipeline. Several officials doubted that skilled saboteurs would leave such glaring evidence of their guilt behind. They wonder if the explosive traces — collected months after the rented boat was returned to its owners — were meant to falsely lead investigators to the Andromeda as the vessel used in the attack.

“The question is whether the story with the sailboat is something to distract or only part of the picture,” said one person with knowledge of the investigation.

Still others allow that the bombers may simply have been sloppy.

“It doesn’t all fit,” a senior European security official said of the fragments of evidence. “But people can make mistakes.”

Suspicions turn to Poland and Ukraine

The German investigation has linked the yacht rental to a Polish company, which is in turn owned by a European company that’s connected to a prominent Ukrainian, fueling speculation from Berlin to Warsaw to Kyiv that a deep-pocketed partisan may have financed the operation. The identity of the Polish company and the Ukrainian individual, as well as his potential motive, remains unclear.

Based on the initial German findings, officials have been whispering about the potential involvement of the Polish or Ukrainian government in the attack. Poland arguably had a motive, some said, considering it has been among the most vocal critics of the Nord Stream project since it began in the late 1990s, warning that the pipelines, running from western Russia to Germany, would make Europe dependent on the Kremlin for energy.

Marcin Przydacz, the Polish president’s chief foreign policy adviser, urged caution about reaching conclusions from the initial evidence. He too shared the view that the Andromeda could be a red herring, but said it may have been planted by Moscow.

“This could be a Russian game to blame” Poland, Przydacz said in an interview at the presidential palace in Warsaw. “Poland had nothing to do with this [attack].”

Intelligence agencies have found no clear evidence that Russia, initially the prime suspect, was responsible.

Privately, former Polish government officials said that despite the country’s vehement opposition to Nord Stream and staunch support for arming Ukraine, they doubted that President Andrzej Duda would authorize an act that risked fracturing the alliance of nations that have come to Ukraine’s defense. Polish officials routinely refer to Ukraine’s conflict with Russia as “our war” and are fearful that if Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds there, he would set his sights on Poland next.

Suspicion also has turned toward Ukraine as the culprit behind the Nord Stream bombings, based in part on intercepted communications of pro-Ukraine individuals discussing the possibility of carrying out an attack on the pipelines before the explosions, The Washington Post previously reported.

A senior Western security official with knowledge of the secretly gathered intelligence said the communications were only discovered after the bombing, when Western spy agencies began searching their records for insights.

“Ukraine absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said last month, questioning why his country would conduct an operation that “destabilizes the region and will divert attention from the war, which is categorically not beneficial to us.”

Those who suspect Ukrainian involvement said that disabling the pipeline could have been an effort to galvanize allied support in the face of Russian aggression, and particularly to strengthen German resolve. Germany had halted activated authorization for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Officials in the United States and Europe initially blamed Russia for the bombing. The country had already halted gas flows on Nord Stream 1, the older of the two sets of pipelines. That suggested that Moscow was willing to engage in a form of political blackmail with energy supplies.

One of the pair of Nord Stream 2 pipes remains intact. Both of the Nord Stream 1 lines were severed in the explosions on Sept. 26.

Some officials said that Ukrainian saboteurs or those from other countries acting in what they felt were Ukraine’s best interest could have attacked Nord Stream without Zelensky’s knowledge, arguing that he doesn’t have complete visibility into all the operations of his government or the military. That kind of plausible deniability could protect the celebrated leader and dampen the political fallout of a brazen attack tied to his country, these officials said.

No country has provided firm evidence tying the attacks to Ukraine, and a senior Biden administration official has cautioned that the intercepted communications of pro-Ukrainian actors are not conclusive.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against making early conclusions as to who was responsible, suggesting that it might be a “false flag” operation, an idea echoed by other German politicians.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a German lawmaker who is part of a committee that was briefed last month by intelligence officials on the probe’s progress, said he believes that investigators have not yet communicated any results because the “evidence is far too thin.”

Kiesewetter said that unfounded speculation over the culprits could endanger cohesion in Europe. “We should continue to ask who had an interest in the detonation” and who “benefits from uncertainty and accusations,” he said.

Trail of breadcrumbs

As the Nord Stream mystery has turned into an international game of Clue, German investigators have scoured the Andromeda for leads. Officials first became interested in the vessel after the country’s domestic intelligence agency received a “very concrete tip” from a Western intelligence service that the boat may have been involved in the sabotage, according to a German security official, who declined to name the country that shared the information.

German authorities determined that the tip was credible and passed the information onto law enforcement officials, the official said.

The Andromeda left a virtual trail of breadcrumbs as it set off from a German port for the Baltic Sea, according to investigators.

Mola Yachting rented out the boat on Sept. 6 from Hohe Düne harbor in Warnemünde, a German port town on the Baltic, near Rostock, which is about 145 miles north of Berlin. The rental location is in plain sight of a huge vacation complex, home to a five-star hotel, seven restaurants and a high-end shopping area, with views across the harbor.

Investigators said the boat then traveled in a northeasterly direction, stopping in Hafendorf Wiek, or “Wiek harbor village,” on the northernmost part of Rügen island.

When a reporter from The Post visited in early March, the area had emptied out, save for the odd local dog-walker braving the biting temperatures. A half-dozen yachts bobbed in the water where the Andromeda is said to have been. “Investigators came [in] mid-January, and we helped them where we could,” said the harbor master, René Redmann.

“It wouldn’t be unusual for a boat setting off from Rostock with the destination of Bornholm to stop in Wiek,” Redmann noted, referring to a Danish island near the site of the Nord Stream explosion. Investigators believe that the Andromeda left Hafendorf Wiek and moored off the coast of the tiny island Christianso, near Bornholm.

A stop in Hafendork Wiek may have offered the Andromeda’s crew a final chance to stock up on supplies before heading to the explosion site.

“Lots of things are loaded on the boats … including groceries,” Redmann said. “Some people stop to tank up on fuel.” Redmann would not confirm that the Andromeda stopped there, citing the continuing law enforcement investigation. But he said he wouldn’t have any record of the crew’s identities, just the name of the boat, the number of people aboard and the type of vessel.

“Recording names of passengers is the job of the charter,” Redmann said.

Thomas Richter, co-owner of the charter company Mola, said that the search of the Andromeda took place in Dranske, on Rügen island, where the yacht was kept in winter storage. He declined to share further details.

‘Don’t talk about Nord Stream’

For all the intrigue around who bombed the pipeline, some Western officials are not so eager to find out.

At gatherings of European and NATO policymakers, officials have settled into a rhythm, said one senior European diplomat: “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” Leaders see little benefit from digging too deeply and finding an uncomfortable answer, the diplomat said, echoing sentiments of several peers in other countries who said they would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or allies were involved.

Even if there were a clear culprit, it would not likely stop the provision of arms to Ukraine, diminish the level of anger with Russia or alter the strategy of the war, these officials argued. The attack happened months ago and allies have continued to commit more and heavier weapons to the fight, which faces a pivotal period in the next few months.

Since no country is yet ruled out from having carried out the attack, officials said they were loath to share suspicions that could accidentally anger a friendly government that might have had a hand in bombing Nord Stream.

In the absence of concrete clues, an awkward silence has prevailed.

“It’s like a corpse at a family gathering,” the European diplomat said, reaching for a grim analogy. Everyone can see there’s a body lying there, but pretends things are normal. “It’s better not to know.”

Harris reported from Warsaw and Washington, Mekhennet from Berlin and Washington, Morris from Berlin, Birnbaum from Washington and Brady from Rügen and Rostock, Germany. Meg Kelly in Washington contributed to this report.

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Traces of explosives found in yacht in Nord Stream sabotage investigation, diplomats say

BERLIN (AP) — Investigators found traces of undersea explosives in samples taken from a yacht that was searched as part of a probe into last year’s attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, European diplomats told the United Nations Security Council.

The diplomats said the investigation has not yet established who sabotaged the pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany, or whether a state was involved.

The attack, which happened as Europe attempted to wean itself off Russian energy sources following the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine , contributed to tensions that followed the start of the war. The source of the sabotage has been a major international mystery.

Denmark, Sweden and Germany have been investigating the Sept. 26 attack, and the Danish Foreign Ministry tweeted a letter Tuesday from the three countries’ U.N. ambassadors to the president of the Security Council with information on their activities so far.

Officials voiced caution in March over media reports that a pro-Ukraine group was involved in the sabotage . German media reported then that five men and a woman used a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland to carry out the attack, and that the vessel set off from the German port of Rostock.

German federal prosecutors declined to comment directly on that and other reports, but they confirmed that a boat was searched in January, and said there was suspicion that it could have been used to transport explosives to blow up the pipelines.

WATCH: State Department says sanctions against Nord Stream 2 are ‘just the beginning’

A section of this week’s letter detailing Germany’s findings said that the yacht’s precise course had not been definitively established. The letter said “traces of subsea explosives were found in the samples taken from the boat during the investigation,” but it did not elaborate.

“At this point it is not possible to reliably establish the identity of the perpetrators and their motives, particularly regarding the question of whether the incident was steered by a state or state actor,” it said. “All information to clarify the matter will be pursued during the continuing investigations.”

The undersea explosions ruptured the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which was Russia’s main natural gas supply route to Germany until Russia cut off supplies at the end of August.

The blasts also damaged the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which never entered service because Germany suspended its certification process shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The pipelines were long a target of criticism by the United States and some of its allies, who warned that they posed a risk to Europe’s energy security by increasing dependence on Russian gas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials have accused the U.S. of staging the explosions, which they have described as a terror attack.

Ukraine has rejected suggestions that it might have ordered the attack. The countries investigating the explosions have not commented on who might have been responsible.

Since the blasts, NATO has boosted its presence in the Baltic and North Seas, using dozens of ships, aircraft and undersea equipment such as drones.

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Nord Stream sabotage probe turns to clues in Poland: Report

Investigators reconstructed the two-week voyage of a 15-metre yacht suspected of being involved in the gas pipeline sabotage, Wall Street Journal reports.

Investigators in Germany are examining evidence suggesting a sabotage team used Poland as an operating base to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The investigators reconstructed the two-week voyage of the Andromeda, a 50-foot (15-metre) yacht suspected of being involved in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, the newspaper said .

Keep reading

Un security council turns down request for nord stream inquiry, russia may demand compensation over nord stream blasts: diplomat, putin calls ukraine role in nord stream blasts ‘sheer nonsense’.

The Journal on Saturday cited people familiar with the voyage as indicating the sabotage crew placed deep-sea explosives on Nord Stream 1, before they set the vessel on a course towards Poland. It added Germany was trying to match DNA samples found on the vessel “to at least one Ukrainian soldier”.

The evidence included data from the Andromeda’s radio and navigation equipment, as well as satellite and mobile phones and Gmail accounts allegedly used by the perpetrators, WSJ reported.

“Taken together, the details show that the boat sailed around each of the locations where the blasts later took place – evidence that fortified investigators’ belief that the Andromeda was instrumental in last year’s destruction of the pipeline,” it said.

Investigators began looking at the vessel after a tip from a Western intelligence service, the newspaper said.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and Poland’s government spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Information about Polish or Ukrainian clues in the destruction of NS1 and NS2, repeated in the media space, is consistently used by the Russian apparatus of influence to create the impression/presumption among the recipients that Warsaw and Kiev were behind this incident,” Stanislaw Zaryn, deputy to Poland’s minister coordinator of special services, wrote on Twitter.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 put Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas in the political spotlight. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines hastened the region’s switch to other energy suppliers.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported the US government learned from a European intelligence agency of a secret plan by Ukraine’s military to attack the pipelines using divers, who reported directly to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces three months before the September 2022 explosions.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied his government’s involvement in the sabotage of the gas pipelines.

“I am the president and I give orders accordingly. Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act that way,” Zelenskyy said, asking for proof of Ukrainian involvement.

German media in March identified the possible involvement of a yacht from a Poland-based company owned by Ukrainian citizens in the attack.

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After the attack: damage to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

Investigating the Nord Stream Attack All the Evidence Points To Kyiv

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The Andromeda is a decrepit tub. The sides of the vessel are dented and scraped from too many adventuresome docking maneuvers while the porous pipes in the head exude a fecal stench. The 75 horsepower diesel engine rattles like a tractor and the entire boat creaks and groans as it ponderously changes course. The autopilot is broken. Other sailors hardly take any notice at all of the sloop: Just another worn charter vessel like so many others on the Baltic Sea.

The perfect yacht if you're looking to avoid attracting attention.

The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 35/2023 (August 25th, 2023) of DER SPIEGEL.

According to the findings of the investigation thus far, a commando of divers and explosives specialists chartered the Andromeda almost exactly one year ago and sailed unnoticed from Warnemünde in northern Germany across the Baltic Sea before, on September 26, 2022, blowing holes in three pipes belonging to the natural gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. It was a catastrophic assault on energy supplies, a singular act of sabotage – an attack on Germany.

The operation was aimed at "inflicting lasting damage to the functionality of the state and its facilities. In this sense, this is an attack on the internal security of the state." That's the legal language used by the examining magistrates at the German Federal Court of Justice in the investigation into unknown perpetrators that has been underway since then.

Unknown because – even though countless criminal investigators, intelligence agents and prosecutors from a dozen countries have been searching for those behind the act – it has not yet been determined who did it. Or why. The findings of the investigation thus far, much of them coming from German officials, are strictly confidential. Nothing is to reach the public. On orders from the Chancellery.

A diver with the German Federal Police's GSG9 special force

"This is the most important investigation of Germany's postwar history because of its potential political implications," says a senior security official. Those within the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) who are responsible for the Nord Stream case, members of Department ST 24, are even prohibited from discussing it with colleagues who aren't part of the probe. Investigators are required to document when and with whom they spoke about which aspect of the case – a requirement that is extremely unusual even at the BKA, Germany's equivalent to the FBI.

There is a lot at stake, that much is clear. If it was a Russian commando, would it be considered an act of war? According to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, an attack on the critical infrastructure of a NATO member state can trigger the mutual defense clause. If it was Ukraine, would that put an end to Germany's ongoing support for the country with tank deliveries or potentially even fighter jets? And what about the Americans? If Washington provided assistance for the attack, might that spell the end of the 75-year trans-Atlantic partnership?

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser

Beyond that, as if more critical questions were needed, the Nord Stream attack has provided a striking blueprint for just how easy it can be to destroy vital infrastructure like pipelines. "It immediately raised the question for me: How can we better protect ourselves," says German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. "The disruption of critical infrastructure can have an enormous effect on people's lives."

There are plenty of targets for such attacks: internet nodes, oil pipelines, nuclear power plants. One can assume that close attention is being paid in North Korea, Iran and other terrorist states on what exactly will happen now. If the perpetrators are not found, if the sponsors of the attack are not sanctioned, if there is no military reaction – then the deterrents standing in the way of similar attacks in the future will be significantly fewer.

But there are leads. DER SPIEGEL, together with German public broadcaster ZDF, assembled a team of more than two dozen journalists to track them down over a period of six months. Their reporting took them around the globe: from the Republic of Moldova to the United States; from Stockholm via Kyiv and Prague to Romania and France. Much of the information comes from sources who cannot be named. It comes from intelligence agencies, investigators, high ranking officials and politicians. And it comes from people who, in one way or another, are directly linked to suspects.

An image taken underwater after the bombing attack on Nord Stream 1

At some point in the reporting, it became clear that the Andromeda had played a critical role, which is why DER SPIEGEL and ZDF chartered the boat once the criminal technicians from the BKA had released it. Together, six reporters followed the paths of the saboteurs across the Baltic Sea to the site of one of the explosions in international waters.

This voyage on its own did not reveal the secrets of the attack, but it made it easier to understand what may have happened and how – what is plausible and what is not. And why investigators have become so convinced that the leads now point in just one single direction. Towards Ukraine.

That consensus in itself is striking, say others – particularly politicians who believe the attack from the Andromeda may have been a "false flag" operation – an attack intentionally made to look as though it was perpetrated by someone else. All the leads point all-too-obviously towards Kyiv, they say, the clues and evidence seem too perfect to be true. The Americans, the Poles and, especially, the Russians, they say, all had much stronger motives to destroy the pipeline than the Ukrainians.

Still others believe that too many inconsistencies remain. Why did the perpetrators use a chartered sailboat for the operation instead of a military vessel? Why wasn't the Andromeda simply scuttled afterwards? How were two or three divers on their own able to blow up pipelines located at a depth of around 80 meters (260 feet) beneath the waves?

The story of the operation is a preposterous thriller packed full of agents and secret service missions, special operations and commando troops, bad guys and conspiracy theorists. A story in which a dilapidated sailboat on the Baltic Sea plays a central role.

It's a chilly January day in Dranske, a town on the northwest tip of the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen. The law enforcement officials show up at 9:45 a.m. for the search, 13 of them from the BKA and Germany's Federal Police, including IT forensic experts, a crime scene investigator and explosives specialists. Their target on this morning are the offices of Mola Yachting GmbH, and they tell the shocked employees that they have a search warrant for a boat that was chartered from the premises. The punishable offense listed on the warrant: "The effectuation of an explosive detonation, anti-constitutional sabotage."

They demand to know where the Andromeda is. The technical chief of Mola tells them it is in winter storage, a few hundred meters away. He leads the group of law enforcement officials along a secluded private road to a former East German army facility, as a confidential memo documents. The Andromeda is sitting on blocks out in the open, with workers sanding down the hull. The search begins at 11:05 a.m. It lasts three days.

The investigators are lucky. Mola didn't clean the boat before storing it for the winter, and the saboteurs were the last people to charter the vessel. A plastic bottle "with apparently Polish labeling" is found next to the sink. Beneath the map table is a single "barefoot shoe." According to the BKA's search log, file number ST 24-240024/22, the officials remove the marine navigation system, a model called Garmin GPSMAP 721.

The sailing yacht Andromeda in the Baltic Sea

Christian Irrgang / DER SPIEGEL

The next day, the federal police bring two bomb-sniffing dogs onboard; they have to be hoisted up using a kind of winch. They spend more than an hour sniffing around onboard the Andromeda . With success, as forensics experts would later confirm in the lab. On a table belowdecks and even on the toilet, they are able to find substantial traces of octogen, an explosive that also works underwater.

Ever since the search of the ship on those days in January, German investigators have been certain that the Andromeda is the key to the Nord Stream case. Finally, a breakthrough.

Early in the investigation, it seemed that such a breakthrough would never come. The few leads the detectives had all turned up nothing of substance, and they had no clear indications of who the perpetrators might be. But then, a few weeks after the attack, intelligence was passed to the BKA indicating that a sailboat was involved.

To avoid causing concern and attracting unwanted attention, the investigators contacted boat rental companies in Rostock and surroundings one at a time – ultimately zeroing in on Mola and the Andromeda .

It was a rather surprising development for the public at large, particularly given that other scenarios seemed so much more likely: submersibles, specialized ships, at least a motorboat or two. But a single sailboat as the base of operations for the most significant act of sabotage in European history?

German officials were also skeptical at first. The federal public prosecutor general commissioned an expert analysis with a clear question of inquiry: "Whether such an act could be carried out with a completely normal yacht or if a much, much larger vessel was necessary." Such was the formulation used by Lars Otte, the deputy head of the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, during a confidential, mid-June session of the Internal Affairs Committee of German parliament, the Bundestag. Speaking to the gathered parliamentarians, he stressed: "The assessment of the expert is: Yes, it is also possible with a completely normal yacht of the kind under consideration."

On September 6, 2022, the Andromeda was bobbing in the waves along with dozens of other boats in a marina in Rostock's Warnemünde district waiting to be taken out by its next renters. For the last decade, it has been plowing through the Baltic Sea every few days, with a new charter crew at the helm. The Andromeda is a Bavaria 50 Cruiser, built in Bavaria in 2012 and frequently belittled by sailors as the "Škoda of the seas." Not exactly elegant, but practical, a bit like a floating station wagon: 15.57 meters (roughly 51 feet) long and a beam of 4.61 meters, it is rather affordable for its size.

Belowdecks, it has five small cabins with space for a maximum of 12 people, if you don't mind a bit of crowding. The double berths are hardly 1.2 meters wide. By contrast, though, there is plenty of storage space and the kitchenette is relatively spacious, complete with a gas stove and a banquette surrounding a varnished dining table. A swimming platform can be folded down from the stern, making it easy to take a dip. It is ideal for divers with their heavy equipment.

A cabin on board the Andromeda

The marina Hohe Düne is located around 10 kilometers from the Rostock city center as the crow flies, a strangely lifeless place with a giant wellness hotel and a solitary pizzeria. Long piers wind their way out into the water to 920 morages, with a small wooden structure right in the middle of Pier G. Those who have chartered a yacht with Mola Yachting must register here, complete with identification, sport boat license and a 1,500-euro deposit.

On September 6, according to reporting by DER SPIEGEL and ZDF, a sailing crew checked in at the Mola shack in the early afternoon to take out the Andromeda . The charter fee had apparently been paid by a Warsaw travel agency called Feeria Lwowa, a company with no website or telephone number.

According to the Polish commercial registry, the company is headed by a 54-year-old woman named Nataliia A., who lives in Kyiv. She completed a course of study in early childhood education, but has no recognizable experience in the tourism industry. She has a Ukrainian mobile phone number. If you call it, a woman answers – before immediately hanging up once you identify yourself as a journalist. A few days later, a Ukrainian "police officer" called back, threatening the reporter with charges of "stalking," citing a rather flimsy justification. Feeria Lwowa's address in Warsaw likewise leads nowhere. There is no office and there are no local employees. It looks as though it is a shell company.

And something else would soon prove to be extremely challenging for investigators: When the saboteurs showed up at the Mola shack to check in for their rental of the Andromeda , they apparently presented a Romanian passport. It had been issued to a certain Ştefan Marcu, as official documents indicate. But who was he? Did he have anything to do with the attack?

Marcu opens the steel gate to his property wearing shorts and flipflops. It is the middle of July, a hot day in Goianul Nou, a village in Moldova just north of the capital of Chiᶊinǎu. The Ukrainian border isn't even 50 kilometers from here.

Ştefan Marcu is a sturdily built man with a deep tan and a black moustache, an engineer with his own company. A team from DER SPIEGEL and ZDF along with reporters from the investigative networks Rise Moldova and OCCRP managed to track him down. The two-story home where he lives with his family is the most attractive one on their street. Marcu stares down at the note the reporters show him, bearing the number 055227683.

Was Ştefan Marcu's passport forged?

He recognizes it immediately. He says he is a citizen of Moldova, but that the number belonged to his old Romanian passport, which expired the previous October. The last time he used the passport, he says, was in 2019 for a vacation in Romania and then, a couple months after that, for a trip to Bulgaria. He says he has no idea how his name got mixed up in the pipeline story. It's the first time he's heard about it, he insists. Aside from the reporters, nobody else has asked him about it, he says, no police officers and no intelligence agents.

After he received his new passport, he says, the woman at the office invalidated his old one. "When I got home, I burned it. I threw it in the oven," Marcu says.

But the data from his passport, officials believe, seems to have been used to produce another document, a falsified passport that was then used to charter the Andromeda . Complete with a new photo. The photo, though, is not of Ştefan Marcu, the 60-year-old from Moldova, but of a young man in his mid-20s with a penetrating gaze and military haircut. The man in the photo is very likely Valeri K. from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. He apparently serves in the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian army.

It's not possible to determine precisely when the saboteurs left the Hohe Düne marina. But the very next day, on September 7, they made their first stop just 60 nautical miles away in Wiek, a tiny harbor on the north coast of Rügen. Under normal circumstances, it is part of a long but idyllic sailing trip along the coast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, past the Fischland-Darss peninsula and the island of Hiddensee.

It takes the team of reporters around 12 hours to sail this first leg of the journey, in pleasant, mid-July weather and calm seas. For most of that distance, the Andromeda is propelled by its motor, at a relatively constant clip of seven to eight knots. In a strong wind, when the mainsail can be set on the 22-meter-tall mast along with the jib, the ship can reach speeds of 10 to 11 knots.

In contrast to Warnemünde, Wiek is a solitary, isolated place, vastly different from the busy Rostock marina. Those wishing to load up their boat in Rostock have to push a handcart back and forth across long piers past dozens of other boats and crews. In Wiek, though, it is possible to drive a delivery truck right up to one of the few moorages that are large enough for a vessel the size of Andromeda . When the skipper of the DER SPIEGEL/ZDF voyage called ahead to reserve a moorage, the harbormaster asked: "Do you want the same spot as the terrorists?"

The harbor master in Wiek on the island of Rügen

The harbor master's notebook, with amounts of diesel pumped and the price

Still, during our visit, marina staffers prove reluctant to talk about the Andromeda and its stopover, at least not on the record. One of the workers who has clear memories of the sailboat's layover and who dealt directly with the crew says that the people on board seemed physically fit and familiar with each other, and that they spoke in a language he was unfamiliar with.

The crew was made up of five men and a woman, says the harbormaster, who filled up the fuel tank of the Andromeda for the saboteurs. That was during the boat's second stop in Wiek, on the return trip to Warnemünde. He wrote down the amount paid for the diesel in a black notebook, the same one he uses to record the fuel purchased by the crew of reporters.

The harbormaster flips back through his notebook and finds two entries that may have been for the diesel purchased by the team of saboteurs: one for 665.03 euros and one for 1,309.43 euros on September 22 and 23, respectively. In addition to filling the boat's tank, though, he recalls, he was also asked to fill up several canisters. One of the men paid for the fuel in cash, pulling a striking number of large-denomination euro bills out of his pocket to do so – but he didn't leave a tip.

After the first stopover in Wiek, the Andromeda disappeared for an extended period. With the help of a meter, investigators have determined that the crew didn't sail the ship and used the motor instead. Around 10 days later, the vessel apparently reappeared off the island of Christiansø, not much more than a rock jutting out of the waves near Bornholm, so small that it is sometimes called Pea Island. The port lies attractively below defensive fortifications built in 1684. The island, located near the easternmost point of Denmark, is home to hardly more than 100 residents, but it is a popular destination for day-trippers who sail over from the vacation island of Bornholm for a lunch of kryddersild .

The harbor at Christiansø in Denmark

It seems safe to say, though, that the saboteurs weren't there for the pickled herring: Christiansø is the nearest port to the site of the detonations. And a chartered sailboat doesn't stand out at all, with almost 50 vessels sailing in and out on busy days, says Søren Andersen. The chief of administration for the tiny islands, Anderson is sitting among portraits of the Danish royal family in a white-plastered building with a green door made of wood and a sign reading "Politi," police. "In December, the Danish police requested us to share all the port data" from September 16 to 18, 2022, says Anderson.

That was when the commando on board the Andromeda made a brief detour – directly south to Poland. On September 19, exactly one week before the pipelines were blown up, the Andromeda docked in Kołobrzeg, Poland, a Baltic Sea resort known for its saline springs and usually packed with tourists during the summer months. And with sailboats. The Andromeda only stayed for 12 hours.

Poland was always one of the most adamant opponents of Nord Stream 2 and vociferously demanded over the course of several years that the project be stopped. Warsaw long viewed Germany's dependence on energy from Moscow as an existential threat. It would be fair to say that Poland had a strong interest in eliminating this threat to its security right off its coastline once and for all.

In May, German investigators traveled to Poland for a "meeting at the level of the prosecutor's offices conducting the investigation," as it would later be described. One question addressed during that meeting was whether the saboteurs had received any support while in Kołobrzeg, either of a material nature, or in the form of personnel. They wanted to know if the port may have been used as a logistical hub.

The responsible public prosecutor in Danzig, from the department for organized crime and corruption, vehemently denies such a scenario when asked. "There is absolutely no evidence for the involvement of a Polish citizen in the detonation of the Nord Stream pipelines," he says. "The investigation has found that during the stay in a Polish harbor, no objects were loaded onto the yacht." In fact, he notes, "the crew of the yacht was checked by Polish border control officials" because they had raised suspicions. Perhaps because of the falsified documents used by the crew? Whatever triggered their concerns, the border control officials made a note of the personal information they had presented.

By September 20, the Andromeda had already departed from Kołobrzeg. By this time, the explosives had likely already been laid and equipped with timed detonators. Christiansø, the sailboat's previous port of call, is, in any case, the closest to the main detonation site. It is located just 44 kilometers – less than a three-hour voyage to the northeast – from the coordinates 55° 32' 27" north, 15° 46′ 28.2" east.

The Baltic Sea gets rather lonely to the east of the Pea Islands. There are fewer ferries, fewer tankers and not too many sailboats either. For miles around, there is nothing but water and sky.

There is, however, something to see on the sonar, some 80 meters below: Four pipes, each with an inside diameter of 1.15 meters, wrapped in up to 11 centimeters of concrete which keeps them on the sea floor, and a layer to protect against corrosion. Beneath that is four centimeters of steel and a coating to ensure the natural gas flows more freely on its long journey from Russia to Germany.

Nordstream 1 begins in the Russian town of Vyborg and runs through the Gulf of Finland and crosses beneath the Baltic Sea before reaching the German town of Lubmin, located near the university town of Greifswald.

The double pipeline is 1,224 kilometers long and consists of 200,000 individual segments, most of which were produced by Europipe in Mühlheim, Germany. During construction, 15 freight trains per week rolled into the ferry port of Sassnitz, where the pipe segments were loaded onto a ship. The project's price tag was 7.4 billion euros, with most of it paid for, directly or indirectly, by the Russian state.

It went into operation in 2012, sending almost 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Russian fields Yuzhno-Russkoye and Shtokman, located on the Barents Sea, to Germany. In 2018, the pipeline accounted for 16 percent of all European Union natural gas imports. Nord Stream 1 was one of the most important pipelines in the world.

Then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin aboard the ship laying the Nord Stream pipeline in 2010

In spring 2018, dredgers again sailed into the Bay of Greifswald to make way for Nord Stream 2, also a double pipeline. This one starts a bit further to the south, in the town of Ust-Luga, located in the Leningrad Oblast – but most of it runs parallel to the first pipeline. It was planned to carry 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas per year to Germany. Taken together, the two pipelines were able to transport far more than Germany consumed each year. Most Germans were in favor of the new pipeline project, blinded to their country's growing dependency on Moscow by the cheap price of Russian gas. A 2021 survey among supporters of all political parties found that an average of 75 percent of Germans were in favor of Nord Stream 2.

Security policy experts and many of Germany's international allies, by contrast, were aghast. Nord Stream 1 had already tied Germany far too closely to Russia, they felt. And now Berlin wanted to import even more energy from Vladimir Putin's empire? The Americans, in particular, were vocal about their opposition to the project. Indeed, Washington thought Nord Stream 2 was so dangerous that it warned Germany that its completion would significantly harm U.S.-German relations.

Ukraine was also radically opposed to the new pipeline. Significant quantities of Russian natural gas flowed to Western Europe through overland pipelines across Ukrainian territory. A second pipeline beneath the Baltic would make parts of the Ukrainian pipeline network obsolete. Kyiv saw Nord Stream as a direct threat to the country.

In September 2021, Nord Stream 2 was completed, but it did not go into operation. And a few months later, the Russian invasion of Ukraine put an end to the political debate – and left Germany scrambling to free itself from dependency on energy imports from Russia as quickly as possible. The initial plan called for continuing to import natural gas through Nord Stream 1 for a time, but the second pipeline was essentially dead in the water.

For the time being, at least. But politics can be fickle, consumers and industry have a fondness for cheap energy and Putin wouldn't be around forever, would he? The four pipes lay on the seabed, ready to be put back in use once that time came.

At 2:03 a.m. on September 26, a blast wave rippled through the bed of the Baltic Sea, powerful enough to be recorded by Swedish seismographs hundreds of kilometers away. The welded seam between two segments of pipe A of Nord Stream 2 was shredded. It was a precise cleavage, likely caused by a relatively small amount of perfectly placed specialized explosive material: octogen. Exactly the same explosive of which forensics experts would later find traces onboard the Andromeda . The explosion initially ripped a roughly 1.5-meter gap in the pipe, but the gas gushing out enlarged the leak.

Seventeen hours later, at 7:04 p.m., there was another blast wave, this time 75 kilometers to the north. It was much stronger, and there were several explosions. Above water, the muffled blast could be heard several kilometers away. This time, both pipes belonging to Nord Stream 1 were destroyed: a 200-meter section of pipe A and a 290-meter segment of pipe B. A 3-D visualization based on underwater camera footage and sonar readings shows deep craters, piles of rubble and bits of pipeline sticking up diagonally from the seafloor.

Initially, nobody knew just how dramatic the situation was, not even the operators of the two pipelines, Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG. Both companies are majority owned by the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom. Initially, they only registered a drastic fall in pipeline pressure, but technicians were immediately concerned that something might by wrong, as were military representatives in the region. On the morning of September 27, a Danish F-16 fighter discovered strange bubbles on the surface of the water, and the Danish military published the first images that afternoon: Natural gas rising up from the bottom of the Baltic had formed circles of bubbles up to 1,000 meters across on the water's surface not far from Bornholm.

An upwelling of gas from the Nord Sea pipeline after the explosions

It's not yet possible to say with complete certainty how the perpetrators went about their business. But the findings of the international investigation make it possible to reconstruct much of what took place. Data from geological monitoring stations, videos and sonar data from the seafloor provide additional clues. That data comes from a Swedish camera team and from Greenpeace, both of which launched their own surveys using underwater devices. For experts, the publicly available information paint a largely consistent picture, according to which the group of saboteurs was likely made up of six people – five men and a woman. Likely a captain, divers, dive assistants and perhaps a doctor.

According to former military and professional divers, the operation would have been possible, though challenging, with such a team. "It's pitch black down there, cold, and there are currents," says Tom Kürten. As a technical diver and expedition leader, he has been inspecting wrecks on the bottom of the Baltic Sea for many years. With the correct equipment, it is possible to dive to depths of 100 meters or more, and he believes it would be impossible to locate the pipelines without technical assistance. Indeed, with a small DownScan, a sonar device, it would be relatively simple, he says. And once the spot has been identified, all you have to do, he says, is throw a "shot line" overboard, a rope with a weight on the end that guides the divers into the depths.

For challenging dives, Kürten also uses a rebreather, which recycles exhaled air and replenishes it with oxygen for the next breath. The advantage is that no tanks are needed, and such devices also produce fewer bubbles, which can be helpful if you are seeking to avoid unwanted attention. Still, such an operation takes time. For 20 minutes spent working at a depth of 80 meters, a total of three hours of dive time is necessary, Kürten estimates. During the ascent, decompression stops are vital so that the body can adjust from the high pressure on the seafloor to the lower pressure at the surface. It's a rather complex undertaking, but certainly possible during a long trip.

Later, when German investigators undertook a closer examination of the detonation sites, specialists from the maritime division of the German special forces unit GSG 9 dived down to take a look.

However you look at it, the operation could not have been performed by amateur divers – nor by hobby sailors. When the team of reporters in the Andromeda arrived at the site above where the explosions took place, a force 5 or 6 wind was blowing, it was raining, and the swells were significant. Standard Baltic Sea weather, in other words – in which it is difficult to keep a sailboat in one spot. According to weather data, mid-September 2022 was similar for several days, though it was calmer both before and afterward.

Explosives expert Fritz Pfeiffer produced an expert opinion for Greenpeace regarding the potential destructive power of the detonations, since the environmental group was interested in knowing how much damage had really been done to the pipeline and what that might mean for the environment.

On underwater images of Nord Stream 1, Pfeiffer identified craters that he believes were created by large amounts of explosives detonating next to the pipeline. Investigators, though, think that a total of less than 100 kilograms of explosives were used and that the sudden release of the highly pressurized natural gas caused much of the damage.

Not far from the long stretches of destroyed pipes belonging to Nord Stream 1, the A pipe of Nord Stream 2 was attacked a second time – the same line that had already been severed 17 hours earlier further to the south. The pipe tore open along a length of approximately 100 meters. A so-called "cutter charge" was likely used, directly over a welded joint. Pfeiffer believes that just eight to 12 kilograms of octogen would have been necessary for such a detonation.

The B pipe of Nord Stream 2, meanwhile, wasn't harmed at all – and could easily be put into use even today. But why did the perpetrators leave one of the four pipes undamaged? There are some indications that the saboteurs confused the A and B pipes of Nord Stream 2 in the darkness and unintentionally attacked the same pipe twice.

Whatever the case, experts seem to agree on one salient fact: specialized submarines or remote-controlled submersibles were not necessary for the operation. But there are several questions to which no answer has yet been found. How were the bombs detonated? Why did so much time pass between the first explosion and the three that followed? Some experts believe that they might have had difficulties in activating the explosives – either via a delayed detonator or a remote detonator.

Perhaps the attack could have been prevented in the first place. It didn't come as a complete surprise, after all. It had been announced several months beforehand, in detail. But the warning wasn't taken seriously enough in the right places.

An encrypted, strictly confidential dispatch from an allied intelligence agency was received by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND – Germany's foreign intelligence agency) in June 2022. Such dispatches are hardly an anomaly, but this one contained a clear warning. It was from the Netherlands' military intelligence agency, which goes by the initials MIVD and is well known for its expertise in Russian cyberwarfare techniques. On this occasion, though, the agency's alarming information seemed to have come from a human asset in Kyiv.

The Dutch also informed the CIA – which, just to be on the safe side, also forwarded it onward to the Germans.

The confidential dispatch sketched out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. The plan called for six commando soldiers from the Ukraine, concealed with fake identities, to charter a boat, dive down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea with specialized equipment and blow up the pipes. According to the information, the men were under the command of Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had apparently not been informed of the plan. The attack was apparently planned to take place during the NATO exercise Baltops on the Baltic Sea. The content of the secret dispatch was originally reported on by the Washington Post in early June.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) and Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi (right)

The BND forwarded the warning to the Chancellery, but at German government headquarters, it was deemed irrelevant. After all, it only arrived at the Chancellery after the NATO maneuver had come to an end, and nothing had happened. That is why nobody sounded the alarm, says one of the few people who learned of the warning when it arrived. Most German security officials believed the information contained in the dispatch was inaccurate.

As a result, no protective measures were introduced, no further investigations were undertaken and no preparations were made to potentially prevent an attack at a later point in time. The Federal Police, the German Navy and the antiterrorism centers never even learned of the warning.

Nor did the German agency responsible for the oversight of Nord Stream.

In the early morning hours of September 26, Klaus Müller, president of the Federal Network Agency, received a telephone call. His agency is responsible for regulating Germany's electricity and natural gas grids. Christoph von dem Bussche, head of the company Cascade, which operates 3,200 kilometers of Germany's natural gas pipelines, was on the other end of the line. According to sources in Berlin, Bussche told Müller that one of the Nord Stream pipelines had just experienced an inexplicable loss of pressure.

The head of the Federal Network Agency must have immediately realized how important that phone call was. He called German Economy Minister Robert Habeck.

Habeck, who is also the vice chancellor, was the first cabinet member to learn of the attack on the pipelines. Sources indicate that he was just as surprised as Müller had been. Neither of them had apparently known about the warning that had been received three months before.

It had also apparently not been discussed in the German Security Cabinet, the smaller group of ministers that has been meeting regularly in the Chancellery since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Müller, though, is the first person who should have been informed of increased risks posed to the pipeline: He is in charge of ensuring the smooth operation of Germany's numerous pipelines, and of protecting them if need be.

The U.S., by contrast, apparently sprang into action in summer 2022, even if the Americans didn't initially trust the Netherlands' source. Washington carefully approached Kyiv with a clear message: Don't do it! Abort the operation! The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit and public broadcaster ARD were the first to report on Washington's warning to Kyiv. But the message from the American's apparently wasn't taken seriously. Perhaps Washington lacked a certain amount of credibility, particularly given how clear they had made it in the past that they were deeply opposed to the gas pipelines connecting Germany and Russia.

Was there perhaps even more information that wasn't passed along? Did the well-informed Dutch military intelligence agents know even more than they shared, such as who was to be on board the ship and perhaps even from which Ukrainian unit they came from? If so, that information is no longer available. Leaving the German investigators to assemble the puzzle pieces on their own.

One lead stems from the falsified passport of Ştefan Marcu. And from the man whose photo is apparently on that document: Valeri K.

Back in June, Lars Otte, the federal prosecutor, told members of the Internal Affairs Committee at the Bundestag that investigators had been able to "almost certainly identify a person who may have taken part in the operation."

The lead takes us to a large city in central Ukraine, to an abominable Soviet-era prefab residential building on the outskirts of Dnipro. The structure has eight, not entirely rosy-smelling entrances, a bar and a minimarket called Stella on the ground floor.

On the third floor of the first entrance is an apartment that is registered to the father of Valeri K. He, too, is called Valeri – and both are members of the military, say neighbors.

Nobody opens the door, despite extended knocking. Instead, the neighbors peek out, an elderly married couple. They say that the Valeris actually live in the building next door and that they only rent out this apartment. The younger Valeri K.'s grandmother, the couple says, used to work at Stella, and suggested dropping by there.

It's stuffy inside the store, and smells of dried fish. The saleswoman says that the grandmother is now the janitor of the neighboring building. Five minutes later, Lyubov K. sets aside her broom and sits down on a bench. She's a small woman with red-dyed hair and speaks Russian. She says she doesn't want to speak with the press, but remains seated on the bench. When asked if her grandson Valeri is in the army, she says "yes." What does he do there? "I don't know." She does say, though, that her son and grandson had only been called up a few months before. The conversation remains brief, ending with the grandmother claiming that her grandson couldn't have been onboard the Andromeda because he doesn't have a passport and is unable to travel overseas.

Another neighbor, a retiree with gray curls and wearing a blue shirt, is more talkative. Her son, she says, went to school with Valeri senior and they also worked together. The two of them had taken a job at a shipyard in Turkey several years before.

Then, the neighbor says, Valeri senior embarked on a completely different career path, smuggling migrants across the Mediterranean on a sailboat. But the operation was busted and the Ukrainians involved arrested. The neighbor says that the younger Valeri K. wasn't involved though.

The neighbors don't have much to say about him. His presence on social media is also limited, apparently limited to VK, a Facebook clone that is popular in Ukraine and Russia.

The most striking thing about the younger Valeri K. is that he is a follower of the openly nationalist youth organization VGO Sokil. It offers young men training in shooting and diving.

His most recent active VK profile is under the name "Chechen from Dnipro," and it is linked to a telephone number. If you enter the number into an App like Getcontact, you can see the names under which the number is saved in other people's contact lists. Among the names for Valeri's number is: "K. 93rd Brigade."

There are also leads to his long-time girlfriend Inna H. The two apparently aren't together any longer, but they have a son together. The mother and child no longer live in Dnipro, but in the German city Frankfurt an der Oder.

They live in a gray housing block just a few hundred meters from the Polish border. There are a number of Ukrainian refugees living in the building, including several relatives of Valeri K.: Inna H., the ex-girlfriend who is the mother of his son, his younger sister Anya K. and apparently also his maternal grandmother Tetyana H.

In May, they received a visit from the police, who searched the apartment. A DNA sample from Valeri K.'s son was then compared with traces found on the Andromeda . But there was no match.

Inna H. lives on one of the upper floors of the apartment block, but the door is opened by an elderly lady when a team of reporters from DER SPIEGEL rings the doorbell. She doesn't give her name, but she looks like the grandmother, Tetjana H., in photos. She doesn't want to talk to journalists.

If people have something to say, she says, they should discuss it with the authorities.

Asked about the accusations against Valeri K., she says only: "We are a simple family, the Germans saved us. Why would we want to do them any harm?"

Officially, politicians and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor are still holding back with any conclusions. Currently, it is not possible to say "this was state-controlled by Ukraine," Federal Prosecutor Otte says. "As far as that is concerned, the investigation is ongoing, much of it still undercover."

Behind the scenes, though, you get clearer statements. Investigators from the BKA, the Federal Police and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor have few remaining doubts that a Ukrainian commando was responsible for blowing up the pipelines. A striking number of clues point to Ukraine, they say. They start with Valeri K., IP addresses of mails and phone calls, location data and numerous other, even clearer clues that have been kept secret so far. One top official says that far more is known than has been stated publicly. According to DER SPIEGEL's sources, investigators are certain that the saboteurs were in Ukraine before and after the attack. Indeed, the overall picture formed by the puzzles pieces of technical information has grown quite clear.

And the possible motives also seem clear to international security circles: The aim, they says, was to deprive Moscow of an important source of revenue for financing the war against Ukraine. And at the same time to deprive Putin once and for all of his most important instrument of blackmail against the German government.

But crucial questions remain unanswered. From how high up was the attack ordered and who knew about it? Was it an intelligence operation that the political leadership in Kyiv learned about only later? Or was it the product of a commando unit acting on its own? Or was it a military operation in which the Ukrainian General Staff was involved? Intelligence experts and security policy experts, however, consider it unlikely that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was in on it: In cases of sabotage, the political leadership is often deliberately kept in the dark so that they can plausibly deny any knowledge later on. In early June, when the first indications of Kyiv's possible involvement came to light, Zelenskyy strongly denied it. "I am president and I give orders accordingly," he said. "Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine. I would never act in such a manner."

In any case, it is difficult terrain for the BKA, not only politically, but also in practical terms. The German criminal investigators cannot conduct investigations in Ukraine, and it isn't expected that Kyiv will provide much support. The German authorities have also shied away from submitting a request to Ukraine for legal assistance because doing so would require that they reveal what they know. That could provide Ukraine the opportunity to cover up any traces that may exist and to protect the people responsible. Asked whether there will be arrest warrants one day, an official familiar with the events replies: "We need a lot of patience."

Senior German government official

A Ukrainian commando carried out an attack on Germany's critical infrastructure? Officials at the Chancellery in Berlin have been discussing intensively for months how to deal with the sensitive findings of the investigation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also been debating possible consequences with his closest advisers. Of course, there aren't many options available to them. A change of course in foreign policy or the idea of confronting Kyiv with the findings seems unthinkable.

The situation changed in March, when the New York Times , Germany's Die Zeit and Berlin-based public broadcaster RBB first reported on the evidence pointing to Ukraine. A little bit later, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper also published its own investigative report. Soon after, Jens Plötner, an adviser to the chancellor, openly addressed the articles in a phone call with Andriy Yermak, one of President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy's closest confidants. The answer was clear: Yermak apparently assured the Germans that the Ukrainian government had not been involved in the plot and that no one from the security apparatus knew who was behind it.

Few in Berlin want to think right now about what action should be taken if the involvement of Ukrainian state agencies is proven. On the one hand, Germany couldn't simply brush off such a serious crime. But suspending support for Ukraine in its war against Russia also wouldn't be an option. "Everyone is shying away from the question of consequences," says one member of parliament with a party that is a member of the German government coalition.

The fact that politicians who normally might at least speak off the record are remaining silent and simply ignoring inquiries is an indicator of just how delicate the situation is. Inquiries about the situation regarding the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline - in ministries, at party headquarters and in parliamentary offices - as to how it is being discussed within the parties or whether the government is already thinking through scenarios for the eventuality that the Ukrainian leadership knew about the operation, go nowhere.

"No," says Irene Mihalic, the first parliamentary secretary of the Green Party, there was almost no discussion about the issue before the summer legislative recess. She says her party will wait for the outcome of the investigations, and that anything else would be pure speculation.

In fact, the information available to members of parliament in this case is also extremely thin. On the one hand, the federal public prosecutor naturally provides only scant information about ongoing investigations. More importantly, the federal government is keeping all the findings under wraps. Even most members of Scholz's cabinet as well as the deputies in the Parliamentary Control Committee, which is tasked with oversight of the work of the intelligence services, don't know much more than what is publicly reported about the attack.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (left) with Chancellery head Wolfgang Schmidt

The gatekeeper for information flows sits on the seventh floor of the Chancellery, diagonally opposite Olaf Scholz. Wolfgang Schmidt, the chancellor's closest confidant and head of the Chancellery, maintains intensive contact with the investigators. He is also briefed each week by the intelligence services and is happy to pick up the phone to make inquiries of his own. When asked, Schmidt says he doesn't want to comment on the Nord Stream case.

Sources within the investigation say they have been amazed by the level of interest the Chancellery head has shown in the progress of the proceedings. And at the same time, how little Berlin seems to care about shedding light on this unprecedented attack on the backbone of Germany's energy supply as quickly as possible.

The BKA has three main offices. One is in Wiesbaden, where investigators deal with organized crime, narcotics offenses, targeted searches and such things. Another, in Berlin, provides headquarters for its experts on issues including Islamist terrorism. And then there's the one in Meckenheim near Bonn, in a gray 1970s, box-like building surrounded by orchards and fields, with red-tiled hallways inside. This is the place where one of the most sensational crimes in German criminal history is to be solved, and it looks like some random rural school.

This is where the BKA's State Protection Department is housed, where the investigators tasked with solving politically motivated crimes work: offenses like attacks, assassinations, espionage and sabotage. In the past, the office investigated the Red Army Faction, domestic left-wing radicals who perpetrated numerous terror attacks in Germany in the 1970s. And the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi cell that killed immigrants, mostly of Turkish descent, across Germany in the early 2000s. More recently, they have been focused on the Reichsbürger movement of militant protesters who deny postwar Germany's right to exists. Now it has the Nord Stream saboteurs in its crosshairs.

The BKA's offices in Meckenheim near Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia

The responsible department is ST 24: State Terrorism. One might assume that dozens of criminologists are working here around the clock researching, searching, and following up on every little lead.

For a time, hundreds of BKA agents were investigating the right-wing extremist madmen around Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, who had been planning an absurd coup attempt to topple the German government. But only a handful of investigators at most have been assigned to work on the Nord Stream case on a full-time basis.

Sources in Berlin say that a small, dedicated group of skilled investigators should be sufficient. Directing more staff wouldn't be of much use anyway, they argue, since there are no large groups to observe and they aren't allowed to conduct investigations in other countries. And if necessary, more BKA people could also be called in addition to support from the Federal Police.

But the perception among investigators is that the will to solve the case is not particularly pronounced in the capital. Politically, it is easier to live with what happened if it remains unclear who is behind the attacks. The process is not being hindered, but neither is there much support from the overarching government ministries. Meanwhile, it is clear to career-oriented ministry officials that there is no glory to be had with this case. If only because the culprits will likely never have to answer for their actions in Germany. Even if they could be identified, it's very unlikely they would be extradited.

So Berlin is looking away, and that is definitely being registered in agencies where staff is constantly in short supply and procedures have to be prioritized. All of which leads to the investigation falling down the priority list.

Regardless, the BKA unit is led by a chief inspector, an experienced veteran in his mid-50s who is considered a shrewd criminologist by his colleagues.

The German investigators frequently exchange information with officials in Sweden and Poland, and traveled to Warsaw and Stockholm in the spring. However, no agreement has been reached on forming a joint procedure, called a Joined Investigation Team in legal vernacular. Ostensibly because the intelligence agencies involved don't want to be constantly sharing their information internationally.

Still, sources in all three countries involved say there is tight coordination. Swedish Nord Stream experts are acting more assertively than the Germans, and it is possible charges could be filed before the end of the year. Mats Ljungqvist, the Swedish prosecutor responsible for the investigation there, recently told Radio Sweden that he believes they may be approaching the final phase of the case.

International investigators and agents also say that all the intelligence has been pointing in one direction: towards Kyiv. At least those who are familiar with the evidence and clues.

In the rest of the world, however, alternative scenarios are still circulating – some spurred by half-baked intelligence, some by amateur military experts and others driven more by domestic political or geostrategic interests.

The American journalist Seymour Hersh, 86, caused quite a stir, for example, when he accused the U.S. of committing the attacks. He claimed that a Norwegian naval vessel had secretly transported American combat divers into the Baltic Sea. The alleged motive: To make sure Russia would no longer be in a position to blackmail Germany with gas supplies. But Hersh didn't provide any evidence to back up his theory and essential parts of his article later turned out to be false. Hersh justified his reporting by saying that the information had been supplied to him by a source in Washington. The Russian government, though, was delighted and vaunted the baseless story as proof that the U.S. was the real warmonger.

Still others claim that such theories are extremely convenient for the Russians because they distract from the fact that they themselves are the perpetrators. As evidence of this, Russian ship movements in the Baltic Sea, reconstructed by journalists from the public broadcasters of Denmark (DR), Sweden (SVT), Finland (Yle) and Norway (NRK), are frequently cited.

On the night of September 21-22, for example, the Danish Navy encountered a conspicuous number of Russian ships east of Bornholm in exactly the area of the later blasts. The automatic identification systems on the boats had been turned off and they were traveling as unidentifiable "dark ships."

The 86-meter-long Sibiryakov , a hydrographic research vessel equipped for underwater operations, was also in the area. According to experts, it often accompanies Russian submarines on their secret test dives in the Baltic Sea. Some micro-submarines also have grabber arms that can be used to perform underwater work. Tasks like placing explosive charges.

But why would the Russians blow up their own pipeline? Especially given that they could simply block it at the push of a button? Why deprive yourself of a lever that still might be useful - at least a few years down the road – to resume blackmailing a Germany that is starving for cheap energy?

It's possible to find reasons, but they are all rather convoluted. One theory holds that Moscow wanted to save itself billions in damages after it violated its own contracts by cutting off promised Nord Stream gas supplies to Germany. If, on the other hand, the pipeline had been blown up by unknown persons, it would be considered a force majeure.

The next theory, somewhat more widespread even among Berlin politicians, goes like this: Russia destroyed the pipelines with the aim of later blaming it on the Ukrainians in a way that could undermine Western support for Kyiv. The Andromeda and all other evidence pointing to Ukraine was planted by Russian agents, they say, to throw the Europeans off the scent.

The theory that it was a "false flag" operation performed by the Russians is considered probable by Roderich Kiesewetter, the security and defense policy point man for the center-right Christian Democrats in the Bundestag. Kiesewetter says it would totally fit with Russia's style to pull off an operation like that perfectly and make it look like the trail leads to Kyiv.

Public prosecutor Lars Otte

Conversely, many other intelligence experts consider it highly improbable that Russian agents, who have show a predilection in recent years of more rustic methods - such as brazen and easily exposed political assassinations - could execute such a complex deception maneuver flawlessly.

German Federal Prosecutor Otte emphasized to the Bundestag's Internal Affairs Committee that they were definitely considering the "working hypothesis" that "state-directed perpetrators from Russia" could be responsible. "Of course, we're following up on those leads as well," Otte said. "But we don't have any evidence or confirmation of that so far."

Agents tend to believe there is a different, more straightforward explanation for the Russian Navy's clear presence in the Baltic last late summer: They suspect that Moscow, like the Dutch and the CIA, was not unaware of the plans to attack Nord Stream, and that the ships were there to patrol along the pipeline to protect it from the expected sabotage.

Particularly given that Ukraine apparently had plans to attack another Russian gas pipeline. Sources within the international security scene say that a sabotage squad had plans to attack and destroy the Turkstream pipelines running from Russia through the Black Sea to Turkey. A corresponding tip-off had also reached the German government together with the first warnings of an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines

It is unclear why there was no follow-up on the suspected plot to attack Turkstream.

One man who should be in a position to know could be found standing in the ballroom of the British Embassy in Prague on a hot July morning. Sir Richard Moore, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence service, had arrived to discuss the global situation with selected intelligence colleagues and diplomats.

Moore is probably one of the best-informed men in the world. If anyone can gain access to all the available data about what happened in the run-up to the explosions under the Baltic Sea, it's the man with the gray crew cut and narrow reading glasses. DER SPIEGEL was able to ask him a quick question about the Nord Stream attack.

It is one of the few official, and thus mentionable encounters with an intelligence service for this story. Another takes place under similar conditions with CIA head William Burns in the posh American ski resort Aspen in the Rocky Mountains. Each year, the Who's Who of the U.S. security apparatus gathers there for the Aspen Security Forum. Burns was joined by senior U.S. armed forces officials and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

When they spoke on the record on the subject of Nord Stream, the top intelligence officials were monosyllabic. Moore said in Prague that he didn't want to interfere in the investigations of Germany, Denmark and Sweden. And in Aspen, when asked about Nord Stream, only security adviser Sullivan responded, and briefly at that. "As you know, there is an ongoing investigation in multiple countries in Europe," Sullivan said coolly. "We'll let that play out, we'll let them lay out the results of the investigation."

The British MI6 chief at least provided a bit of context. He said that we have to be prepared for the fact that underwater attacks are now part of the arsenal of modern warfare. His service therefore informs the British government about its own Achilles' heels, adding that there are quite a few of them. "Seabed warfare," as such underwater operations are called in military jargon, is not just about pipelines for oil and gas. The power lines of offshore wind farms and especially undersea internet cables are also targets – and potentially even easier to destroy since you don't need explosives, just the right tools.

On September 23, three days before the explosive charges went off, the Andromeda returned to its home port in Rostock. The saboteurs, it is assumed, packed their things, handed in the boat key at the Mola Yachting charter base and walked away via Pier G.

It was one of the most amazing twists in this criminal case, at least at first glance. Why not just sink the boat, including the explosive residue and DNA traces?

Reporters from DER SPIEGEL and the public broadcaster ZDF in July 2022 aboard the Andromeda

Presumably because the investigators would have the been on the trail of the commando much sooner than three months later, because it was precisely such anomalies that they initially searched for: things like rented dive boats. Or charter boats that had suddenly disappeared. But the Andromeda remained just one yacht for hire among hundreds, long since back in port when the seabed shook. And the saboteurs had more than enough time to leave the country and cover their tracks.

Nine months later, on a Saturday afternoon in June, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) was standing at the harbor quay in Rostock's Warnemünde district. In the background, the masts swayed in the marina; in the foreground the BP84 Neustadt ship towered over everything, 86 meters long, with a 57 millimeter shipboard gun. The Neustadt is the Federal Police force's newest ship. It's also in part a response to the Nord Stream attack.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser with Federal Police head Dieter Romann (left) in front of the vessel Neustadt .

"Increasingly, the lines between internal and external security are becoming blurred, and nowhere is that more conspicuous than here," the interior minister said. She explained that the attack showed how vulnerable we are. "The Baltic Sea has become a geopolitical hotspot."

In the background, the Federal Police Orchestra played the maritime anthem "Save the Sea." It was time for the vessel's christening. Faeser pulled on a rope and a champagne bottle swung toward the Neustadt . The bottle hit the ship's hull with a dull clonk, without breaking. A murmur went through the crowd. Sailors believe it is bad luck if the bottle doesn't break.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, CIA-Chief William Burns was called "Richard Burns”. We corrected the mistake.

Mehr lesen über

MIG head Sir Richard Moore: a few Achilles' heels

German investigators confirm search of yacht suspected of role in Nord Stream sabotage

No concrete link to perpetrator found despite reports of involvement of ukraine group operating independently of kyiv.

Gas bubbles from Nord Stream 2 leak reaching surface of the Baltic Sea in 2022. Photograph: Danish military/The New York Times

German investigators have confirmed searching a yacht in January they suspect was used in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines – but, apart from traces of explosives, found no concrete link to any perpetrator.

Media reports on Wednesday in Germany and the US suggested investigators had found links to a Ukraine commando group operating independently of the government in Kyiv.

German investigators have identified a yacht they suspect of departing the German Baltic port of Rostock on September 6th last, 20 days before the attack, to transport explosives to the site.

An investigation by Die Zeit weekly and German public television showed, the yacht, based in Poland and owned by two Ukrainians, had a crew of five men and one woman: a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor.

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On September 26th three explosions and sharp drops in pressure were recorded in the pipelines at a depth of 70m near the island of Bornholm, outside Denmark’s territorial waters but in its exclusive economic zone. Sweden reported a fourth gas leak on September 29th.

A day after the explosion, investigators tracked the boat first to the nearby Darss peninsula and then Christianso, a Danish island near Bornholm.

German reports say investigators are unsure of the suspected perpetrators’ nationality: they reportedly used forged passports in their mission, including to rent the boat, and transported their cargo to the boat using a delivery truck.

Leading Ukrainian officials have dismissed the claims, with defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov calling it was a “rather strange story that has nothing to do with us”.

“It would be a certain compliment to our special forces, but those were not our actions,” said Mr Reznikov at a meeting on Wednesday in Stockholm with Nato members and alliance applicants.

Sweden’s security service confirmed that it had found remnants of explosives near the pipelines last November. On Wednesday, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson declined to comment on the reports.

Leading politicians and officials in Stockholm, Berlin and Washington have hurried to play down the idea of Ukrainian involvement – while insisting they would not pre-empt the outcome of three separate investigations.

“As long as the investigation is ongoing, any responsible politician will hold back with comments,” said Mr Robert Habeck, federal economics and energy minister in Berlin.

Defence minister Boris Pistorius also warned about drawing hasty conclusions and that investigations were “not robust enough” to approach suspects.

“I recommend calm,” said Mr Pistorius. “There are also indications from experts ... that it could also be a false [flag] operation” – with a third country perpetrator planting clues linking the attack to Ukraine.

Investigators have yet to produce any evidence of Russian involvement. Russia has consistently denied involvement and blamed western rivals for the explosions.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media RIA Novosti: “This is an obvious misinformation campaign co-ordinated by the media.”

Derek Scally

Derek Scally is an Irish Times journalist based in Berlin

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Key details behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts revealed by scientists

Researchers in Norway reveal further analysis of 2022 explosions as well as a detailed timeline of events

Scientists investigating the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines have revealed key new details of explosions linked to the event, which remains unsolved on its first anniversary.

Researchers in Norway shared with the Guardian seismic evidence of the four explosions, becoming the first national body to publicly confirm the second two detonations, as well as revealing a detailed timeline of events.

The recently discovered additional explosions took place in an area north-east of the Danish Baltic island of Bornholm about seven seconds and 16 seconds after the two previously known detonations.

Using information from seismic stations in northern Europe and Germany, including the Swedish National Seismic Network and Danish stations on Bornholm, seismologists deployed advanced analysis techniques to observe and pinpoint the blasts.

Seismologists at Norsar, Norway’s national data centre for the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT), told the Guardian they had so far found a total of four explosions – one south-east of Bornholm and three north-east of the island.

Two clear seismic events, named Event S and Event N, were identified on 26 September 2022, soon after the attack. The first, on Nord Stream 2, occurred at 02:03:24 (UTC+2), and the second, on Nord Stream 1, at 19:03:50 (UTC+2).

Norsar said there could potentially be further explosions buried in the data.

The explosions made holes in both Nord Stream 1 pipelines and one of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines. By November last year, Swedish investigators had confirmed that the breaches were caused by man-made explosives.

Investigations are continuing, but officials quoted in the US and German press have said the evidence points towards a Ukrainian-backed group, or a pro-Ukrainian group operating without the knowledge of the leadership in Kyiv.

German investigators have focused on a 51ft rental yacht called the Andromeda, which was hired by a mysterious crew of five men and one woman, at least some of whom were travelling on false passports.

Der Spiegel, which recreated the Andromeda’s journey , quoted investigators as saying the evidence all pointed at Kyiv’s involvement. There is debate, however, over whether a small crew of divers operating from a pleasure yacht would have been capable of carrying out the difficult, deep and slow dives necessary to place the explosives.

A leaked US defence document, reported by the Washington Post , showed the CIA had been tipped off by an allied European agency in June 2022, three months before the attack, that six members of Ukraine’s special operations forces were going to rent a boat and use a submersible vehicle to dive to the seabed using oxygen and helium for breathing, in order to sabotage the pipeline. But the leaked US document said the planned operation had been put on hold.

Other reports in the Scandinavian media have pointed to a cluster of Russian ships, with their identifying transponders turned off, in the vicinity of the blast sites in the days before the explosions.

The Nord Stream pipelines are operated by two companies, Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG, both majority-owned by the Russian state energy company Gazprom. Nord Stream 1 and 2 are both twin pipelines, and together they bring up to 110bn cubic metres of gas annually from Russia to Germany.

Nord Stream 1 went into operation in 2012. Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021 but has never transported any gas. From the outset it was mired in controversy in the face of adamant opposition from German allies, in particular the US and Poland, who both believed the Germans were making themselves and much of the rest of Europe hostage to Russian energy supplies.

The US made clear that bilateral relations would be badly affected if Nord Stream 2 went into operation. Once the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, all talk of opening the pipeline was shelved.

The newly discovered events, named NB and NC, took place about seven seconds and 16 seconds after the event previously known as Event N, which they now refer to as NA.

Investigations by Denmark, Sweden and Germany are understood to be planned for publication in a joint study with Norsar. Authorities for all three countries declined to comment on the investigations.

In July, the UN security council heard investigators had found traces of undersea explosives in samples from a yacht, but that they were unable to reliably establish the identity or motives of those involved or whether it was the work of a specific country.

Using information from a number of seismic stations in northern Europe and Germany, including the Swedish National Seismic Network and the Danish stations on Bornholm, seismologists used advanced analysis techniques to observe the additional two explosions.

According to their calculations, the second and third explosions (NA and NB) were 220 metres apart from each other (with the third west of the second) and the fourth was several kilometres south-west of the second.

Andreas Köhler, a senior seismologist at Norsar, said the distance between NA and NB “fit very well with the distance between both pipelines of Nord Stream 1 at the westernmost gas plume location northeast of Bornholm.” Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 both have two pipelines each.

The location of the final explosion, however, is less clear because there are less station observations. “This best fits an explosion on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but we cannot exclude a location at Nord Stream 2,” said Kohler.

Analysis of the source mechanism from the signals showed they were generated by explosive devices.

Based in Kjeller, near Oslo, Norsar monitors events across the world including nuclear testing in North Korea, the impact of CO 2 storage on the Norwegian continental shelf and conflict zones such as Ukraine.

It takes 10 minutes for shock waves to reach them after a nuclear test in North Korea, with location accuracy of 150-200 metres, leading to the claim that it is “10 minutes from Kjeller to North Korea”.

The war in Ukraine has marked a significant breakthrough for Norsar in terms of the potential use of seismology in conflict monitoring. “The technology that is used to find explosions the other side of the globe can also find explosions closer to home,” said its chief executive, Anne Strømmen Lycke.

It started monitoring Ukraine for the Civil Radiation Authority due to concerns of radioactive landfall over Norway after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It monitors bombing around the power plant on a continuing basis and has been able to contribute evidence to the UN truth commission.

In June, its scientists were able to confirm the time and location of reports of two explosions at the Kakhovka dam using data from seismic stations in Romania and Ukraine.

“It’s amazing, the accuracy of the observation and the use of it. The UN truth commission for Ukraine has contacted us to ask us to verify some events, among them the Kakhovka dam, so they are interested in having these cold data as basis for their considerations.”

Norsar is also investigating whether its technology could be used in the future to monitor ceasefires.

“We know that we could see, based on frequency content and signal difference, between different helicopter types and likely also different weaponry types,” Strømmen Lycke said.

“And that could be something to verify and then you could actually monitor and trace after unravelling who did what. I suppose that is why the UN truth commission is interested in these things.”

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The Searcher

Fishing for Secrets in the Nord Stream Abyss

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The skies over the Baltic Sea are a clear blue with just faint ribbons of clouds. It’s May 24 and Erik Andersson eats a bowl of yogurt for breakfast on the deck of the Swedish diving vessel Baltic Explorer. Between bites, the 62-year-old retired engineer and entrepreneur discusses the previous day’s work on his investigation into one of the most significant international crimes in recent history: the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

“Well, we arrived at the site, it was the southern site, you know, the first bomb that exploded at 2:03 in the morning local time 26th of September, and we started by making sonar scans with the sonar sensors that are attached to the boat,” he says to the camera held by his daughter Agnes, who has joined him on the expedition to document his journey. “We’re scanning back and forth over the explosion site and by doing that, we got a three-dimensional depth profile. And we could map out, we could see immediately that that was the trench, 100 by 60 meters and 10-meter-deep trench, which was quite an interesting discovery. That’s what we were looking for. It’s almost like a photo of the crime scene. I think it’s the first time we have an accurate three-dimensional model of the crime scene.”

That evening, just after 5 p.m., Andersson stands inside the cabin of the Baltic Explorer behind the captain, watching a video monitor as the ship slowly maneuvers back and forth over a section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off Sweden’s coast. On the screen, sonar imaging comes into focus and reveals a hole in a pipeline on the seabed. Andersson jokingly calls this section of the pipeline the “holy grail” of his investigation because it is the only section of the three strands of the Nord Stream pipeline that was bombed but did not cause a massive gas rupture. That’s because it was no longer pressurized when the explosives detonated. This is significant, Andersson says, because on the other two bombed lines, the explosion caused the pipeline to break apart, making it impossible to see what the initial puncture wound from the bombs looked like.

Before the expedition, Andersson believed that if he could find the hole, then it would be the first time anyone outside of a government authority or the Nord Stream company had examined a bomb puncture in the pipeline from the sabotage. “What we want to see is really the primary impact of the explosives. And this site is the only site I think now where we have any hope to see that because all the other sites, there had been this enormous outflow of gas: natural gas that’s just blown away all the mud and all the traces that were of the original explosion,” Andersson explained. “It’s not so easy to find. We didn’t see it on the boat-mounted sonar, so we have to send down the fish,” the nickname given by the captain to the submersible sonar device. Eventually, using the “fish,” they managed to find their target.

“It’s on the seam,” says the captain in a matter-of-fact tone as Andersson stares at the sonar monitor.

“It’s right on the seam?” Andersson asks.

“Yeah,” the captain responds.

“Whoa,” exclaims Andersson. “It’s on the seam! It’s right on the seam! Yeah. So, this is the first evidence that they actually put the explosives on the seam. They knew about the seam. That must be the weak point.”

Andersson is not a professional investigator or a journalist, and his voyage was not sponsored by a government. By training, he is an engineer with a master’s degree in engineering physics. He had a successful career at Volvo and Boeing and worked on advanced programs used by commercial and military aircraft, including U.S. military aircraft. He had followed the developments of the Nord Stream bombing carefully, but it was not until journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell story alleging that President Joe Biden had personally ordered the destruction of the pipelines that he became obsessed with the mystery. The expedition to the bombing site grew out of that passion. Andersson freely admits that he was motivated by a desire to prove that Hersh’s narrative was correct. What he found was quite different.

A handout photo provided by the Swedish Coast Guard shows the release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea on Sept. 27, 2022.

A Forensic Investigation

On September 26, 2022, when a series of explosions rocked the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea waters off the coasts of Sweden and Denmark, Andersson followed the news like everyone else. He says he didn’t see it as a massive geopolitical mystery or an event of much consequence beyond the potential environmental impact in the water. “It wasn’t like a big thing when it happened,” he recalls. “I found the media coverage fishy,” he said. “It was like they were downplaying it.” Initial news reports showed a pool of bubbling water caused by the discharge of gas in the sea. The possibility that the gas release was the result of a leak or other accident was quickly ruled out once the Danish and Swedish authorities did an initial survey of the site. And once the other bombs went off 17 hours later in multiple sites, there was no doubt. Government authorities swiftly concluded that an intentional act of sabotage had been carried out against a high-profile, profitable, and controversial international project controlled by Russia.

Andersson saw video clips circulating on Twitter that showed Biden and other U.S. officials appearing to threaten to take out the pipeline in the months before the attacks. “With all the history of the Nord Stream 2 and the motivation, I suspected that this was somehow a U.S.-sponsored action, I guess, but I wasn’t thinking much about that,” he said. Andersson had spent years working on jet fuel calculations for major airline corporations, and he was curious, on a scientific level, to hear details of how the pipelines exploded.

He was frustrated that very few technical details had filtered into the media. There were aerial images of the bubbling pools, but nothing showing the aftermath of the immediate impact. The first explosion had happened on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm at 2:03 a.m., so it is not surprising there was no active surveillance of the event itself.

“It was annoying me tremendously that the first footage was like 12 hours after. While in the immediate event, the gas plume must have been enormous and just the thought of what could have happened,” said Andersson.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines each had two lines that stretched from northwestern Russia and under the Baltic Sea to northern Germany. On Sept. 26, 2022, three of the four lines were severely damaged in an act of sabotage. The first explosion occurred on Line A of Nord Stream 2 at 2:03 a.m. off the coast of the Danish island Bornholm. Seventeen hours later, off the coast of Sweden, three more explosions occurred, damaging both of the Nord Stream 1 Lines and a second section of Nord Stream 2 Line A. Line B of Nord Stream 2, the one closest to Russian territory, was the only line left undamaged.

Sweden, Denmark, and Germany all launched investigations with the support of the United States. Divers filled shipping containers with underwater evidence and conducted marine video surveys and forensic analysis. Publicly, insinuations and accusations proliferated. The U.S. all but accused Russia of blowing up its own pipeline. Ukraine directly accused Vladimir Putin of responsibility. Open-source analysts began monitoring ship movement data and speculating about how Moscow might have done it. Putin charged that “Anglo-Saxon powers” were behind the attack. Some analysts speculated that Poland, the most aggressive supporter of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, may be the culprit. Given the larger context of the Russian invasion, Ukraine clearly had the strongest motive, but Kyiv steadfastly denied it had anything to do with the bombing.

Andersson tweeted some criticism of the government investigations of the incident, mostly focused on the lack of transparency. He also criticized media outlets for not uncovering more forensic evidence, despite the official pronouncements that the explosions were a deliberate act of terrorism and the possibility the sabotage was conducted or sponsored by a major world power. He found the secrecy disturbing. “There was no real information being shared with the public about the evidence that had been gathered or just sort of what exactly happened down there on a scientific or forensic level,” he said. “I think that when the government is so secretive, they’re feeding speculation and conspiracy theories.”

On February 8, Hersh published his story on Substack, charging that Biden had personally authorized the bombing of the pipelines and that U.S. navy divers had planted the bombs on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines during NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercises in the Baltic Sea three months before they detonated. Russia publicly embraced Hersh’s story and introduced it as evidence of the need for an independent United Nations investigation into the attacks. The White House called Hersh’s report “utterly false and complete fiction.”

“When the government is so secretive, they’re feeding speculation and conspiracy theories.”

Andersson had never heard of Hersh, but when he saw journalists and commentators he admired on Twitter defending the 85-year-old reporter from the almost immediate deluge of attacks on his credibility by prominent media and political figures, as well as the denials from the White House, his gut instinct was that the right people were attacking Hersh. “I saw he had a lot of respect. I mean, this is a very experienced journalist, and he knows how to deal with sources, to evaluate his sources.” Andersson’s sense was that Hersh’s story was “probably true,” but he was mostly interested in the voluminous details contained in his report.

Soon, Andersson was spending his days and nights poring over every news story on the bombing that he could find, watching hours of news footage, and exchanging analyses with a wide cross section of people on Twitter, mainly accounts scouring the internet for open-source data that might shed light on who perpetrated the attacks and how. Andersson would engage both critics and supporters of Hersh and argue his case, ask questions, or share information. He eventually helped assemble an informal online war room with a handful of other amateur sleuths , and they publicly and privately compared notes and built on one another’s research. He also watched countless interviews Hersh did about his story, hanging on to every new detail that had not been in his original article, including an assertion that some of the bombs planted by the saboteurs did not detonate, leading to a scramble by the U.S. to remove the evidence.

At the beginning of his full-time obsession with the Nord Stream attacks, Andersson worked exclusively online. He began tinkering around with MarineTraffic , a service for monitoring the movement of ships and vessels and began reviewing all the data from the Baltic Sea to search for corroboration of various aspects of Hersh’s report. He also argued with open-source analysts aligned with the research group Bellingcat, whose network emerged as a leading force in trying to debunk (and mock) virtually every detail of Hersh’s story. Andersson often appeared in the Twitter feed of Oliver Alexander , a Danish researcher who has been particularly vicious in his denunciations of Hersh (he refers to him as “Senile Hersh”) to argue with him about his conclusions . He also discreetly joined Bellingcat’s Discord forum on the Nord Stream bombing and said it appeared to him to largely be a groupthink operation aimed at proving that Russia was behind the attack.

Andersson also began corresponding with some prominent scientists and researchers in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, sharing his theories and analysis. Several leading researchers working to document the seismic activity caused by the Nord Stream blasts engaged in extended email exchanges with him, and some thanked Andersson for his insights and for pointing out discrepancies or errors in their data presentations.

On March 7, the New York Times and a consortium of German media outlets led by Die Zeit and ARD reported that U.S. intelligence and German law enforcement sources were investigating what they characterized as a “pro-Ukrainian” group suspected of being involved in the attacks. Neither story directly accused the Ukrainian government of involvement. The German reports identified a 50-foot sailboat, the Andromeda, rented in the Baltic Sea port town of Warnemünde by a company registered in Poland and owned by two Ukrainians. According to the reports, a team of six people, at least some of whom allegedly used fake passports, left a slew of evidence onboard, including explosive residue. Ukraine vehemently denied it had any involvement in the attacks. For his part, Hersh suggested that the Andromeda evidence had been concocted as part of a cover story to counter his exposé and draw attention away from the actual perpetrator, the U.S. government.

In this aerial view, the Andromeda, a 50-foot Bavaria 50 Cruiser recreational sailing yacht, stands in a dry dock on the headland of Bug on Rügen island on March 17, 2023, near Dranske, Germany.

Andersson grew tired of the online information wars and speculation based on publicly available data that he believed was subject to manipulation or biased interpretations. He had watched scores of documentaries and news reports about the Nord Stream attacks, including the handful of films featuring underwater footage of the damaged pipelines. He says he got the sense the journalists filming under the waters of the Baltic “were not guided by some forensic interest to figure out what was going on” and only filmed superficial footage of the crime scene. “There was no primary damage from the explosion anywhere, so there was nothing that could narrow down the number of possible narratives.”

In March, Andersson began looking for a captain with a ship willing to take him on his own expedition. Within days, he had contracted a vessel with Patrik Juhlin, a captain Andersson jovially described as a “cowboy.” Juhlin was an experienced and knowledgeable Baltic skipper willing to push the bounds of rules and regulations and cruise around in the international waters where multiple bombs had exploded. Andersson’s mission, he said, centered around “very simple objectives: the type, size, and placement of the bombs.”

Andersson spent $10,000 on the boat charter and another $10,000 on an underwater drone with a high-resolution camera and other equipment. He taught himself how to use the remotely piloted marine surveillance vessel, beginning in his backyard swimming pool and then eventually conducting tests off the coast of Gothenburg. He also wanted the ability to take sediment samples from the seabed, so he improvised a valve that looked like a high school science project. He used plastic cylinders and bicycle inner tubes to collect samples that might contain traces of explosives.

Andersson applied for permission from the Swedish and Danish authorities and was pleasantly surprised when they approved his request to conduct a survey. “It was perfectly legal and allowed to go there, but it was still prohibited by some sort of insinuation that we’re not supposed to do it,” he said.

Although Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the U.S., and Russia are all currently investigating the sabotage of the pipelines and are doing so with vastly superior equipment, resources, and access, Andersson was skeptical there would be any meaningful transparency from the national investigations — certainly not anytime soon. He had no hope that new organizations would do serious forensic investigations of the blast sites. “I think that there must be some competition if they are just sweeping the things under the carpet.”

Aboard the Baltic Explorer, Erik Andersson and his daughter Agnes monitor the video feed from an underwater drone over Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on May 24, 2023.

The Engineer

If you look at Erik Andersson’s CV, it paints an impressive picture of a successful entrepreneur and inventor. Early in his career he worked for Volvo, before his work caught the eye of major airline corporations and he negotiated the buyout of a program he had developed. He helped start a new company where, as chief technology officer, he oversaw the development of software for major airlines. Eventually, the firm was acquired by Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen in 2006 for $100 million. Andersson wanted to continue working for Boeing, so he stayed on as an engineer. “I worked on trajectory optimization and aircraft performance modeling. I learned a lot about flight physics and forces generated by accelerating gas masses,” he said. “Some of this general knowledge has been useful to me in the Nord Stream investigation.”

In 2016, he left Boeing and retired, though he continues to work on a variety of projects, including a teak wood harvesting plantation on a rainforest he manages in Brazil. How he came to own a majority share of that business is a story unto itself, but it centers around Andersson allegedly getting swindled out of $1 million by a Swedish politician and businessman. He aggressively fought back against the fraud, a battle that was covered by Swedish media . The politician denied any wrongdoing, but Andersson emerged from the battle with a majority stake in the business.

When you talk to Andersson or look at his social media feeds, you quickly encounter two major strands of his personality. Clearly, he has a sharp scientific and analytical mind. He researches his hypotheses extensively and tries to use solid scientific and mathematical approaches to proving or disproving them. He readily admits when he is wrong, though he first stubbornly exhausts all possibilities that he might be right. He engages in lengthy and detailed email exchanges and conversations with scientists and government officials in Sweden and elsewhere.

“I think it’s a healthy thinking process to create narratives and then look for confirmation as long as you are aware that’s what you are doing, and you’re ready to say you were wrong if the evidence says so,” he argues. “If you pretend to be ‘objective,’ you are much more likely to be fooled by your biases, I think. It’s also much easier to change your mind if you go all in for some narrative until you are exhausted and done with it.”

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But there is another aspect to Andersson that would seem to contradict his scientific disposition, and that is his enthusiasm for a mishmash of fringe theories about Covid-19, the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., and other dubious narratives popular in MAGA world. He admires Donald Trump; disparages climate crisis activists; and retweets dubious theories about Anthony Fauci, Covid, and China. Andersson said he liked many of Trump’s campaign pledges, including on immigration, deregulation, and pulling back from foreign wars. He also supported Trump’s posture toward Putin and Russia.

Andersson didn’t just watch the Trump campaign. He logged onto a betting marketplace in October 2015 and saw that oddsmakers were offering 18 to 1 odds, so he placed an initial bet of 100,000 Swedish krona, a bit more than $12,000 at the time, that Trump would win in 2016. When he woke up the morning after the election, he was 2.5 million Swedish krona — or $300,000 — richer. “I should have put up a third of my fortune, the optimal bet, which should have been bigger. So, it was a small bet. I was very conservative.”

Andersson was elated when Trump won and said he wished Sweden could have a leader like Trump. Mostly, though, he was excited that a bombastic outsider might shake up the system in the world’s most powerful nation. “I was interested to see what would happen. You know, it’s like a big sledgehammer coming in.”

Perhaps it was his fascination with such counter-narratives that led him to believe so fervently in Hersh’s account of the Nord Stream bombing. But unlike many social media warriors, when confronted with empirical evidence that refuted his hypothesis, he changed his position.

Andersson retrieves soil samples taken near Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to test for explosive residue on May 24, 2023.

Popular Oversight

Andersson began his investigation onboard the Baltic Explorer on May 22 and declared his mission an act of “popular oversight.” If governments, especially those whose allies may be responsible for the attacks, “can control all the evidence and then tell a story and expect us to take it at face value, that’s not how the system should work.” He said he wanted to prove that private investigations of major world incidents could serve as a guardrail against media outlets spinning false narratives or governments covering up crimes. “This is no criticism of [lead prosecutor] Mats Ljungqvist and the Swedish investigation. I see signs that they might actually do a good job,” he said. “It’s more a general observation from similar cases that a certain amount of citizen oversight is good to help authorities to not abuse their control of information.”

For three days, Andersson’s vessel traversed the crime scene in the Baltic Sea, and he created extensive sonar maps of each of the blast sites. He filmed the damage from the explosions and the sites where sections of pipelines ruptured. In the case of one section of Nord Stream 2, which was punctured by a blast but did not explode because it had been depressurized, he captured what appears to be the only private footage of primary damage from an explosive device used in the bombing. He discovered craters from gas explosions and found evidence suggesting that the bombs had been dug into the mud, indicating that divers, not drones, likely placed explosives under or along the lines. “I felt that the Swedish investigator sounded very credible when he said that this could only be done by big state actor. And I don’t really see that now,” Andersson said. He also believes his research shows that it is unlikely a marine drone or other underwater vessel was used to plant the bombs, as has been suggested by analysts who believe Russia carried out the attack. “I think it would be very difficult to place the bomb under the seams with a remote-operated vehicle and do the variety of tasks of digging a hole and putting it in in there. It was a slab that you dig down next to the pipeline. I think a diver could have done it in a very short period of time.”

Hersh has been adamant that the bombs were placed by American divers and that it was a highly complex task necessitating not only U.S. Navy specialists, but also the support of Norwegian maritime forces. Some analysts , including Hersh , have also suggested that the 80-meter dive could not have been accomplished from a sailboat, such as the Andromeda, which has been connected by German law enforcement to the operation.

“Totally false,” says Peter Andersson, an executive at Poseidon Diving Systems , a Swedish company that provides advanced diving equipment to militaries around the globe, including the U.S., Germany, and Sweden. A world-class diver who travels the globe teaching military and civilian diving instructors to use Poseidon’s equipment, Peter (no relation to Erik) says he personally knows at least 30 divers in Sweden alone who are capable of such a dive. “It’s very common in Germany, very common in the U.S. and so on around the world doing these kinds of dives. I could easily do this, no problem,” he said. “You don’t need to be super experienced, but for a military diver or a paramilitary diver, it is no problem at all.”

Peter Andersson, who estimates that he has personally done several hundred dives in the Baltic Sea, said that if the divers dispensed with traditional safety precautions and backup equipment and used underwater propulsion devices to descend to the pipelines, the entire sabotage mission would be achievable in a matter of hours with two divers and a support crew. “In the case of doing this, bending all the rules, don’t care about security, don’t care about having bailout tanks that we normally have, if you’re in a war mode, you can easily go down with the machine,” he said. “Of course, if something happens, they will never find you. But I think that in this case, putting some explosives there has nothing to do with the rules and regulations and backup plans.”

While a sailboat would not typically be a sound choice for most deep-sea diving operations, in the case of a clandestine military or paramilitary operation, Peter Andersson says it would be a brilliant cover. “When you see a sailboat, the last thing you think of is diving,” he said. “That is a perfect disguise. If you take all the ships and the vessels that you can figure out to take — like a freight boat, canal boat, or whatever — the sailboat is the best way to disguise the diving operation because nobody would think that’s what you’re doing.” He said that if you had three or four strong individuals onboard, they could use ropes and other tools to retrieve the divers and equipment.

The divers, he said, would not have to be tethered to the boat. They could be dropped in the water and later use a marker buoy to identify themselves once they ascend. The boat could then cruise around in wait for the mission to be accomplished. Transporting the explosives to the bottom of the sea, even if they weighed hundreds of kilograms, he added, would be possible if the saboteurs used buoyancy bags. “And then you can work down there and even if you want to stay down there for one hour, it will only take like 3 hours to get to the surface in total,” he said.

Just because it would be possible to conduct such a dive operation from a sailboat does not mean that is what happened. Jens Greinert, a marine geologist who chairs the Deep Sea Monitoring Group at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, said he believes it would have been easier for the saboteurs to use remotely piloted devices rather than human divers to plant the explosives. “Personally I think it was either a small submersible, which doesn’t have to be big, or it was something along the lines of a robot,” he said in an interview with our reporting partner ARD. “You don’t need a diver to put anything in the sediment. I would even say machines can do it better.”

A former German military diver, however, was skeptical a submersible or robotic device was used to plant the explosives. Noting that the Baltic Sea is heavily surveilled, he said that using such equipment capable of planting bombs would have drawn far more attention and potentially necessitated a much larger vessel than a sailboat. “Both are possible, but it would have been a very sophisticated and very expensive robotic,” he told our reporting parter Die Zeit. “If it was a sailing yacht, it would have been complicated to deploy a robotic, because of the weight but also for the steering mechanism. You would need a calm sea and no wind.” He estimated that if humans planted the bombs, each dive would take between 30 minutes to two and a half hours depending on the equipment used and how much time was spent on the sea floor identifying the lines and planting the explosives.

When the Andromeda story first emerged in March, German officials cautioned that the ship could be a “false flag” to conceal the true identity of the saboteurs or that other ships may have been involved. The amount of evidence left on the boat and the trail of digital clues leading to Ukrainian individuals appeared to be either deliberate or the work of sloppy amateurs.

The kitchen area and table stand inside the Andromeda on March 17, 2023.

German investigators appear to be intensifying their probe of possible Polish connections to the attacks, something Warsaw has consistently denied. The Andromeda is known to have made at least one 12-hour stop at a port in Poland during its voyage in the Baltic, and the Wall Street Journal reported that the Andromeda suspects “used Poland as a logistical and financial hub.” The Polish government said that allegation was “completely false and is not supported by the evidence of the investigation.”

Along with Ukraine, the Polish government was the most vehement opponent of the Nord Stream pipeline. Poland has direct access to the sea and held its own exercises, code-named REKIN-22, in the Baltic in late September, just days before the pipelines were sabotaged. The day after the blasts, Poland cut the ribbon on a new pipeline that was established as a direct competitor to the Moscow-led initiative. The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Ukrainians who rented the Andromeda were Polish residents and used local bank accounts and paralegals for their business. “There is no evidence whatsoever that would indicate the involvement of Polish citizens in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline,” Polish investigators said in a carefully worded statement June 21.

“Russia, the United States, and any number of other state or independent actors have the infrastructure and ability to have carried this off at a reasonable cost,” said a former U.S. Navy underwater demolition specialist who reviewed Erik Andersson’s footage and other images. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he now works in the private sector and is not authorized to speak to the media. “It doesn’t have to necessarily be a James Bond-esque operation.”

Seismic Readings

Andersson’s data suggests that the seismic readings registered after the explosions were not caused exclusively from the detonation of the bombs, but were also the result of the sudden and immensely powerful release of the pressurized gas from inside the pipelines. Andersson reached that conclusion after he and his son, a computational engineer who works on seismic surveys in the oil industry, ran a series of advanced mathematical equations. First, they solved Euler’s equations in the geometry of the pipelines, which created a basis for them to make calculations about what happened inside the lines after they were punctured by bombs. This data allowed them to utilize seismic air gun simulation software developed at Stanford University to understand the dynamics of the massive gas bubbles caused by the puncturing of the lines. They also ran the rocket equation to calculate the propulsive force of the gas. “The signature of the gas explosion is much bigger than the signature from the bombs,” Andersson said.

If their calculations are correct, various speculations that the explosions would have required 500-900 kilograms of explosives may be erroneous. The New York Times cited a European lawmaker briefed by his country’s foreign intelligence service late last year as saying more than 1,000 pounds, or 453 kg, of “military grade” explosives were used in the operation. “I am saying with high confidence that I don’t think the bombs were that big,” Andersson said. “The size of the bomb cannot be determined by the seismic data currently available.”

Andersson used side scan sonar imaging to create underwater maps depicting the condition of all four Nord Stream pipeline strands in May 2023. The images were captured by Captain Patrik Juhlin of the Baltic Explorer. The first explosion of the Nord Stream sabotage occurred on a section of Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm at 2:03 am on September 26, 2022. The puncturing of the pipeline caused a massive release of gas, resulting in high thrusts that severed sections of the pipeline and left large craters on the seabed.

But Andersson is not just relying on calculating seismic and hydroacoustic levels to determine the size or placement of the bombs. His footage of a blast hole and other detonation sites suggest that the sabotage could have been accomplished with a smaller quantity of explosives: 50 kg or less for each line. “Fifty kilograms placed at intersections with concrete supports would probably do the trick,” said the former Navy demolition specialist who reviewed the footage. “At given pipeline pressures? Wow.” He and a German military explosive expert who also reviewed Andersson’s images agreed the bombs could potentially have been as small as 10 kg each depending on the specific type of explosives used.

Andersson’s video footage of the pipelines has convinced him that the saboteurs used slabs of explosives, rather than shaped charges, to puncture the lines. “It’s sloppily put there. It’s not professionally applied to surgically cut a hole in the pipeline or anything like that. That’s not what we’re seeing. It was crudely dug in a little bit in the mud next to the pipeline,” he said. “I think it tells a story of a diver who was in a hurry, perhaps diving without the possibility of surface decompression and thus only having 10-15 minutes to spend on the bottom.”

The former German military diver, who reviewed Andersson’s footage, agreed with his assessment that slabs of explosives rather than shaped charges were likely used at the site of the second explosion on Line A of Nord Stream 2. “With a shaped charge, we would see markers, cuts, the impact of the charge,” he said. “We would recognize it clearly. We don’t see that here. Everything speaks to a slab charge.”

With the images and footage currently available to the public, it is difficult to determine the nature of all of the bombs and whether they were identical at each site. The former U.S. Navy specialist said he would not entirely rule out that the saboteurs used cutting or shaped charges at some point in the operation because of their ability to forcefully and quickly pierce through metal and concrete. “I don’t think ‘cutting charges’ are mandatory given hydraulic pressures at depth and placement of charges,” he said. “Deformation of the pipe at a welded junction to the point of failure doesn’t require a cutting charge, in my opinion. But cutting charges make sense and are within the realm of plausibility for sure.”

Andersson also believes that his footage indicates that only one bomb was intended for each line, not two as Hersh has at times suggested . “I gave up the theory of double bombs after the expedition,” Andersson said. “I think there were just four.” All of this in turn could make it more plausible that a small team of divers could have pulled off the operation and not necessarily one sponsored or deployed by a major nation state like the U.S. or Russia. This would not exonerate any particular suspect, but it does suggest a wider circle of actors, nation states, or private groups could have pulled it off. 

Andersson may also have solved one of the several sub-mysteries of the Nord Stream saga: Why were only three of the four pipelines attacked? Proponents of the theory that Moscow did the bombing have pointed to the fact that the line closest to Russian territory was not damaged. This, they say, may be evidence Russia wanted to preserve a line in order to swiftly resume gas delivery should political winds shift on support for Ukraine or if Germany had faced a fuel or heating crisis last winter, as many analysts had predicted. Hersh, meanwhile, claimed that the bomb planted on the line closest to Russia simply failed to detonate and that the U.S. military clandestinely removed the evidence. “We were there within a day or two and picked it up and took it away so nobody else could see what kind of evidence there might be with the weapons used,” Hersh said.

Andersson believes that the saboteurs accidentally placed a second bomb on a northern section of Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That explosion did not result in the type of massive damage as the other three bombs because it had been depressurized following the initial blast 17 hours earlier. Line B of Nord Stream 2 was the only line to escape damage from the sabotage. Andersson believes the saboteurs experienced magnetic interference with their compasses when trying to place a bomb on Line B and accidentally rigged a second bomb to the A line, which was just 50 meters away.

On June 20, Der Spiegel reported that German investigators believe the fourth line was actually rigged with a bomb, but that it was a much smaller device than the others. But an official from Nord Stream 2 AG, the company that owns the pipeline, said that line is functional and remains filled with gas, though the company intentionally reduced its pressure to half the level it functioned at prior to the blasts. “Our concern is to safeguard the integrity of the line and safeguard any risk to the environment, to understand how we could stop any further gas seepage from the lines,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

On his expedition, Andersson filmed the aftermath of the destruction caused by the first bomb of the sabotage action, the one that blew up Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline at 2:03 a.m. About 70 kilometers northeast of that blast site, Andersson shot video of a puncture wound he believes was caused by a second bomb on that line. This was the discovery he described as the “holy grail” of his mission. He was able to film it because the line had depressurized after the initial blast, so it did not break the pipeline apart, and the hole from the bomb remained intact. That hole is just 50 meters away from the other strand of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the one closest to Russia.

Andersson suspects that the saboteurs encountered magnetic anomalies on their compasses when they were under water causing them to accidentally place two bombs on Line A of Nord Stream 2. “I would have made the same mistake with my drone if the captain hadn’t told me to make small moves and always return to the starting point,” Andersson said. “The compass pointed in the exact opposite direction of what it should, and before [the captain] advised me to turn back, I was heading full speed towards the wrong pipe. They are only 50 meters apart in that location. Maybe the compass failure was because of stray electrical currents in the pipeline itself, and if that situation appeared when the perpetrators executed their mission their compasses would have led them to the wrong string. It is possible that they accidentally blew up the A-string of Nord Stream 2 twice.”

A group of journalists who filmed a documentary for the BBC and Sweden’s Expressen newspaper encountered a compass malfunction similar to the one Andersson experienced when they filmed over the site late last year, according to a source who participated in the expedition.

Poseidon’s Peter Andersson made clear he has no decisive theory on what happened but said he believes the erratic compass theory is technically plausible. “When you’re trying to put the bombs under the pipe, you need to dig a little bit with your hands. It’s not rock-solid clay or something, it’s more like silt. It’s very loose, but you need to dig a little bit. And when you do this, the visibility becomes totally zero. It’s like in a mud cloud,” he said. In this case, he said, the saboteurs would have needed to rely exclusively on the compass readings. If those were inverted, as was the case with Erik’s readings during his survey of the Nord Stream 2 lines, it is possible they mistakenly placed a bomb on the wrong line. “If you’re doing this, you’re a little bit stressed. You have no clue. It’s not like walking in the forest. You have no clue when you look up which direction you are going or which direction you came from, because you just have to look at the compass.”

The former German military diver agreed that such compass interference can happen, including near pipelines like the Nord Stream, but he said professional divers should know how to calibrate them and adjust to such anomalies.

Andreas Köhler is the senior research seismologist at Norwegian Seismic Array, a joint initiative established in 1968 between the U.S. and Norway to aid in the detection of earthquakes and nuclear explosions. He co-authored an academic research study with colleagues from Germany, Sweden, and Denmark on the Nord Stream blasts, which was presented at a geosciences conference in Vienna in April, and is working on another report with an international team. “We observe seismic signals from four explosions,” he said via email. “One in the early morning at NS2 Southeast of the island of Bornholm, and three in the afternoon Northeast of Bornholm. Our data suggests that at least two occurred at NS1, possibly all three.” Based on their modeling and available data, the scientists determined they could not rule out a second explosion on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Andersson suspects that the possible second bomb on that line was not detected by seismologists because it occurred at the same time as much more massive explosions were taking place. Köhler, who was aware of Andersson’s expedition, declined to comment. “We can’t comment on any public or private investigation as we’re only focused on analyzing the seismological data, which is our expertise,” he said.

Another scientist involved with the international academic study did not want to be identified for fear of irritating their government. That person said that multiple nations operating in the Baltic, including the U.S., have access to a far greater array of data, including from seismic readings and hydrophones, than the scientists possess and would likely be able to determine exactly where bombs were detonated and how large they were. Those governments have not made any of that data available.

“It goes way back to at least the ’60s — where we had this program of planting underwater microphones, hydrophones, under the water, in various chokepoints around the world, under the different oceans and sea,” said James Bamford, an expert on U.S. surveillance systems who has written several books about the NSA and CIA. “So, working secretly with the Swedish government, the U.S. planted a lot of these undersea hydrophones under the Baltic Sea, and those are sitting down there. And what they do is they listen, and they’re listening constantly.”

Eric Dunham, a geophysics professor at Stanford University, has been studying the Nord Stream blasts and is trying to determine which underwater events were a result of bombs and which were caused by gas release or other aftereffects of the puncturing of the pipelines. There are many challenges involved in answering these questions — or to definitively test Andersson’s theories. “Larger explosives produce higher amplitude blast waves as well as create larger gas bubbles that oscillate more slowly. Both the blast wave and bubble oscillations create hydroacoustic and seismic waves,” Dunham said. “However, a likely complication in the case of the Nord Stream events is gas discharge from the pipes. If the gas discharge is large enough, it can alter the hydroacoustic and seismic waves that are generated.”

Andersson said the image painted by Hersh of a state of alarm among planners of the U.S. operation when one of the bombs did not explode was, to him, one of the most interesting parts of the story. “It seemed to have some account of what happened after the blast, that it was panic,” Andersson said. “Hersh referred to some panic when everything didn’t explode and that eventually they were racing with American ships to the site and picked up those bombs. And I’ve been really trying to get the actual time when this happened.” He spent months reviewing marine traffic data and satellite images for any evidence of a U.S. ship in the area to conduct the sort of crime scene cleanup that Hersh reported. “If it turns out that there actually were no unexploded bombs, then of course this is something that’s just a major hoax,” he said. When pressed, Andersson finally says, “I just don’t think it happened.”

Andersson’s current hypothesis is that a small team of divers placed a single bomb under both lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and mistakenly placed two bombs on Line A of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. For yet unexplainable reasons, the first bomb on that line exploded at 2:03 a.m. and then all the other bombs exploded 17 hours later.

Erik Andersson on the Swedish island of Lyr on June 17, 2023.

Unresolved Questions

After Andersson’s expedition, reports emerged that German investigators had determined the type of explosives used in the operation, including octogen, which is insoluble in water and not difficult to obtain, particularly for a government. The Germans have reportedly matched samples taken from the blast site with the explosive traces left on the Andromeda. Andersson said he would like to verify those reports with his own evidence. “We took some sediment samples at the place where the bomb exploded on a depressurized pipeline,” he said. “It never hurts to double check.”

Two weeks after Andersson’s expedition, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. had intelligence three months before the attack that the Ukrainian military was planning an operation to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 pipeline using a small team of six divers. The paper asserted that European intelligence reports “made clear they were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wouldn’t know about the operation.” Die Zeit then reported that last summer the CIA directly warned Ukraine not to carry out such an attack.

Though it was not his aim, Andersson’s research directly challenges Hersh’s details, as well as the narrative preferred by analysts who believe Russia carried out the bombing. In short, his findings bolster the case that Ukraine — or private actors — could be responsible for the attack. As for his confirmation bias in favor of Hersh’s narrative, the expedition changed his mind. “It’s not the main hypothesis anymore in my mind. In my main story, they were fairly primitive divers going in with a big slab of explosives. They dug in next to the pipelines and they placed them. There were four separate dives, but there was simplified logistics. It could have been a small boat, and they made a big mistake, and they ended up putting one bomb on the wrong pipe. That’s the story that is in my mind.”

Andersson’s mission did not solve the mystery of the Nord Stream bombing — he never thought it would — but the data he collected does contribute to the public understanding of what occurred.

During his expedition, Andersson also discovered a single diver’s boot near the site of the string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was bombed but did not explode. A freelance journalist who accompanied Andersson published an article speculating about the boot’s origins, but Andersson acknowledges that the boot could have belonged to any number of actors in the highly trafficked sea and may not be connected to the bombing. He admits that experts he consulted “didn’t make much of it.” But, he says, he cannot rule out that it was lost by one of the perpetrators and may contain forensic evidence linking it to the crime. “We never expected to find any traces of the perpetrators, but nevertheless we ran across a diver’s boot,” he said. “I have talked to Captain Patrik about retrieving the boot. We can do it, if someone pays for it. That would also be a good demonstration of what it means to dive at this site.” 

Greinert, the German marine geologist, cautioned that Andersson’s expedition took place eight months after the Nord Stream bombings. During that time, multiple governments have examined the crime scene and retrieved evidence. “What was looked at here in May is no longer the original,” he said. “You have to take that into account.” He added, “From what you see, you can only draw conclusions about what happened, not who. Unless someone has left his credit card there.”

Andersson said he is keeping an open mind about all possible culprits and is eager for his data to be reviewed by more experts who can fact-check his own calculations and hypotheses . “I want to put everything in open source for people to look at,” he says. “I think if a person is doing something, you should assume innocence until they’re proven guilty. But when big governments do things, they shouldn’t have that protection.” The Baltic Sea, he adds, is a heavily surveilled and trafficked body of water. It is populated by swarms of advanced underwater monitoring devices, with the skies above and the water below patrolled by multiple nations’ naval vessels and aircraft. Andersson refuses to accept that the U.S. and its allies do not know exactly what happened last September 26, and he questions the motives behind their secrecy. “I don’t think the nationality of the divers is the huge thing,” said Andersson. “The Hersh story and Andromeda story are very similar in terms of how the bombs were placed and the size of the bombs.”

While Andersson now doubts the veracity of many details in Hersh’s account of the Nord Stream bombings, he is not yet prepared to exonerate the Biden administration. “Even if Ukraine planned and executed the operation, I can’t stop thinking that the U.S. was in on it in a way that makes them responsible,” he said. “At a minimum, Ukraine must have been certain that the U.S. would celebrate a successful sabotage of Nord Stream. And that’s what happened. Antony Blinken said it was a ‘great opportunity’ and Victoria Nuland cheered that the pipes had been turned into scrap metal. So, if Ukraine did it, they did it for the team, and if they didn’t inform their team leader, the USA, about all details, it was because that’s what was expected of them.”

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Online Sleuths Untangle the Mystery of the Nord Stream Sabotage

It’s been six months since the Nord Stream gas pipelines were ruptured by a series of explosions, leaking tons of methane into the environment and  igniting an international whodunit . Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and an unnamed pro-Ukrainian group have all been accused of planting explosives on the Baltic Sea pipelines in recent months. But half a year since the sabotage took place, the mystery remains unsolved.

Digital sleuths are stepping in to help provide clarity around bombshell claims about who was behind the attacks. Open source intelligence (OSINT) researchers are using public sources of data in their efforts to verify or debunk the snippets of information published about the Nord Stream explosions. They’re providing a glimpse of clarity to an incident that’s shrouded by secrecy and international politics.

Since early February, multiple media reports have claimed to provide new information about who could have attacked the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on September 26. However, the reports have largely been based on anonymous sources, including unnamed intelligence officials and leaks from government investigations into the attacks.

First, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published claims that the US was behind attacks in a  post on Substack . This was followed by reports in The New York Times and German publication  Die Zeit claiming a pro-Ukrainian group was responsible. (European leaders have  previously speculated Russia could be behind the attacks, and Russia has  blamed the United Kingdom .) No country has claimed responsibility for the blasts so far, and official investigations are ongoing.

Each of the recent reports has provided little hard evidence to show what may actually have happened, while helping to fuel speculation. Jacob Kaarsbo, a senior analyst at Think Tank Europa, who previously worked in Danish intelligence for 15 years, says the claims have been “remarkable” but also “speculative” in nature. “In my mind, they don’t really alter the picture,” Kaarsbo says, adding the attacks look highly complex and would likely be “very hard to pull off without it being a state actor or at least with state sponsorship.”

In the absence of official information, OSINT researchers have been trying to plug the gaps by examining the claims of the new reports with public data.  OSINT analysis is a powerful way to determine how an event may have unfolded. For instance, flight- and ship-tracking data can reveal movements around the world, satellite images show Earth in near real-time, while small clues in the backgrounds of photos and videos can reveal where they were taken. The techniques have  uncovered Russian assassins , spotted North Korea evading  international trading sanctions , identified  potential war criminals , and  documented pollution .

Marah Eakin

Matt Reynolds

Reece Rogers

Carlton Reid

For the Nord Stream blasts, there was little OSINT available. Researchers  identified “dark ships” in the area . But underwater, there are obviously limited data sources that can be tapped into—cameras and sensors don’t monitor every inch of the pipelines. “OSINT probably won’t break this case open, but it can be used to verify or strengthen other hypotheses,” says Oliver Alexander, an analyst who focuses on OSINT and has been closely looking at the Nord Stream blasts. “I do think that it’s more of a verification tool.”

Alexander and others have been examining the claims made so far. The New York Times and  Die Zeit  both published stories on March 7 claiming a Ukrainian group was behind the sabotage. (Ukraine has  denied any involvement .)  Die Zeit published more details, claiming German investigators searched a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, knew where the yacht sailed from, and that six people were involved in the operation, including two divers. All of them used forged passports, the publication reported.

The details were enough for OSINT researchers to start tracking down which yacht could have been used. Alexander, as well as contributors to the open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat, started following the breadcrumbs, narrowing down potential vessels. A follow-up  report soon named the boat under suspicion as the Andromeda , a 15-meter-long yacht. Webcam footage from the harbor where it is  believed the Andromeda was docked shows the movement of a boat around the time reported by the publications. (The Andromeda is  reportedly too small to be required to use ship-tracking systems.)  Years-old videos   and photos of the boat have surfaced. The sleuthing adds public details to the reports.

Similarly, OSINT has been used to debunk Hersh’s story claiming the United States was behind the explosions. (Hersh has  defended his article , while US officials have said it was false.) Alexander has used, among other things,  ship-tracking data to show Norwegian ships were “accounted for” and not in a “position to have placed the explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline, as claimed by Hersh.” Another detailed article from Norwegian journalists has similarly  poured cold water on Hersh’s claims , partly using satellite data.

The sabotage was always likely to be controversial and surrounded by rumors: Russia’s full-scale invasion of  Ukraine in February 2022 has heated global tensions and put pressure on diplomats around the world. There has been a whirlwind of disinformation around the blasts, further muddying the waters. Mary Blankenship, a disinformation researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has analyzed online conversations around the war, says the “high uncertainty and high stakes” of the incident help to fuel the spread of disinformation. 

“This is an issue that exploits existing worries, tensions, and grievances within European audiences,” Blankenship says. Initially, the earliest disinformation on Twitter about the explosions came from conspiracy theorists, Blankenship says, who shared a pre-war statement from US president Joe Biden, where he said there would be  an “end” to Nord Stream 2 if Russia invaded Ukraine . Since then, Russia and China have taken to  sharing unproven theories about the sabotage, the researcher says.

“Disinformation actors, but also official representatives of the [Russian] regime, stepped up their efforts on every news story that was published on this—however contradictory about the origins of the blast—be it a blog post by Seymour Hersh or a  New York Times article,” says Peter Stano, an EU spokesperson, adding most disinformation narratives have circled around the idea that “the US is to blame.” The EU’s disinformation monitoring project, EUvsDisinfo, has  flagged more than 150 pieces of disinformation linked to the Nord Stream explosions, including those building on Hersh’s story. “EUvsDisinfo experts also found that Moscow considers the recent materials in German-language media a hoax,” Stano says.

While OSINT is helping to provide bits of extra detail on the claims about the Nord Stream attacks, it is likely that reports debunking dubious claims reach fewer people than disinformation or claims that are hard to verify. “It does not nearly get the same level of engagement,” Blankenship says. “You can have a book’s worth of evidence for it, and they would still find a way to discount it.”

And while OSINT research can answer some questions, it has its limits and can also raise new ones. Kaarsbo, the former Danish intelligence official, and other experts have pointed out that the Andromeda is a relatively small yacht, and it may have been unable to carry the amount of explosives needed to blow the pipelines. “The Andromeda is quite likely a piece of the puzzle, but I don’t think it’s a bigger piece of the puzzle that everyone makes it out to be,” Alexander says. “I think there are a lot of the big pieces missing.” Detailed sonar imagery of the damaged pipes would help people to understand what happened underwater, Alexander adds.

Ultimately, there is still very little hard public evidence—either from governments or publicly available online—about who may have been behind the attacks. Behind closed doors, intelligence agencies likely have more data and theories on the potential culprits. However, investigators in Sweden and Denmark refused to comment on their progress, while Germany’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor confirmed it had searched a yacht and is continuing to examine for explosives. German officials have also said there could be a  chance of a “false flag” operation to smear Ukraine . And when the countries complete their investigations, there’s no guarantee they will publish their findings or evidence to back them up. The mystery continues.

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Suspicions Multiply as Nord Stream Sabotage Remains Unsolved

Intelligence leaks surrounding the sabotage of the pipelines have provided more questions than answers. It may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.

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By Erika Solomon

Erika Solomon traveled to Copenhagen and the island of Christianso in Denmark, as well as to the ports of Rostock and Wiek in northern Germany, to report and write this article.

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Russian and Danish naval vessels that disappear in the Baltic Sea, days before an underwater pipeline blast. A German charter yacht with traces of explosives, and a crew with forged passports. Blurry photographs of a mysterious object found near a single surviving pipeline strand.

These are the latest clues in the hunt to reveal who, last Sept. 26, blew up most of the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream pipelines, some 260 feet below the Baltic Sea, that were once the largest supplier of Europe’s natural gas.

Nord Stream

pipelines 1 and 2

Sites of leaks

Christianso

Kaliningrad

Just a few weeks ago, New York Times reporting on new intelligence, along with German police findings reported by the German media, suggested a possible solution to the Nord Stream puzzle: pro-Ukraine operatives renting a German pleasure boat and pulling off a fantastical covert mission.

Since then, a flurry of new findings and competing narratives has sown distrust among Western allies and presented an opening for Russian diplomatic pressure that has raised the geopolitical stakes in Europe’s Baltic region.

Nowhere is the tension felt more strongly than among the 98 residents of Denmark’s Christianso — an island so tiny, you can walk across it in 10 minutes. Living just 12 nautical miles away from the blast site, everyone from the herring pickler to the inn chef sees skies and waters filled with foreboding.

“Before the blast, no one talked about Nord Stream. I didn’t even know how close we were until it happened,” said Soren Thiim Andersen, governor of Christianso. “Afterward, we all felt exposed. We were all wondering: What really just happened here?”

The pleasure boat at the center of the German investigation, the Andromeda, docked at Christianso’s stone harbor after being chartered in the northern German port of Rostock on Sept. 5 and making an overnight stop at Wiek, a more obscure north German port with no security cameras and little oversight.

A local port worker, who asked not to be identified because of ongoing investigations, told The Times that he remembered the visit unusually well: He had repeatedly tried to speak to the crew, first in German, then English. Instead of attempting any kind of reply, in any language, one man simply handed him the docking fee and turned away.

The Andromeda now sits in dry dock overlooking the Baltic Sea, its innards pulled out by investigators. Three German officials told The Times that the investigators had found traces of explosives on the boat, and discovered that two crew members had used fake Bulgarian passports.

That hunt led back to Christianso, where Mr. Andersen, the governor, said that in December, the Danish police had him write a Facebook post, instructing residents to send photographs of the harbor or boats from Sept. 16 to Sept. 18, around the time the Andromeda is believed to have docked. Investigators arrived a month later to interview residents and check the photos.

Christianso locals scoffed at the idea a 50-foot pleasure yacht could pull off such a spectacular attack — and so have naval experts from Germany, Sweden and Denmark.

They argue that even with skilled divers, it would be extremely challenging for a six-person crew to plant the explosives needed on the seabed some 262 feet below, and create blasts registering 2.5 on the Richter scale.

“Knowing how the explosion would work, with the sea pressure at those depths — you need very specialized knowledge. How do the physics play out?” said Johannes Riber, a naval officer and analyst at Denmark’s Institute for Strategy and War Studies, who called it a “James Bond” theory.

Whether the Andromeda was a decoy or part of a broader mission, he said, remained unanswerable. But the most plausible attack, he said, required an undersea drone or mini submarine to plant the explosives, and either naval or professional underwater drilling vessels.

Mr. Riber and others also pointed to photographs of the aftermath — pipes bent backward, cracks and craters on the seabed — as traces of a massive bomb, something in the range of 1,000 to 1,500 kilograms.

“This was not a few pieces of plastic explosives,” Mr. Riber said. “That is a powerful explosion at play.”

Yet one pipeline expert and a professional diver who was part of the team that laid the Nord Stream 2 pipelines last year disagreed. Both the expert and the diver, who works regularly in the Baltic Sea, insisted a small plastic explosive could do the job, as long as it was placed near a seam of the pipeline. They asked not to be identified because they were speaking without authorization from Nord Stream.

“It is like lighting a match next to a leaking gasoline pump — the gas is all you need,” said one diver.

By the end of March, Russian diplomats threw up yet another twist: They revealed that in February, Nord Stream 2 had hired a vessel to inspect its pipelines and discovered an unidentified object next to a seam of its sole undamaged strand, about 19 miles from the explosion sites. The company alerted both Russia and Denmark, which controls the waters in which the object was spotted.

Even under pressure from Vladimir V. Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, who summoned Denmark’s chargé d’affaires in Moscow, Denmark initially resisted offering much information to the company or Russia, aside from publicly releasing a blurry photo of a 12-inch-long cylinder, covered in algae.

Last week, Danish authorities allowed Nord Stream 2 to observe their dive to recover the object — releasing photographs of a now cleaned-off dark cylinder. Denmark’s ministry of defense said it might be part of a maritime smoke buoy.

But Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, told The Times that experts in Moscow believed the cylinder was part of an explosive device.

“The continued secrecy of the ongoing investigation by Denmark, Germany and Sweden, as well as the refusal to cooperate with Russia, undermine its credibility,” Mr. Barbin wrote in a statement to The Times.

And Mr. Putin himself continues to use the incident to pressure Denmark to back Moscow’s demands for a joint international investigation. On April 5, he warned the situation in the Baltic Sea was becoming “turbulent in a literal sense.”

Even as Moscow pushes for a joint probe, other findings are pointing fingers back at Russia.

The German news website T-Online worked in late March with an open-source investigator, Oliver Alexander, to present the paths of six Russian vessels whose names were given to them by what they described as an “intelligence source from a NATO country.”

Their findings showed the boats disappeared from satellite signals on Sept. 21 — around the time Christianso residents spotted vessels that disappeared from their apps — after veering off course from a publicly announced Russian maritime exercise.

That information could match an early lead that one German official told The Times was explored late last year by Germany’s intelligence services who had also tracked Russian vessels from naval exercises, but were unable to bridge an approximately 20-nautical-mile gap between where some veered off course and the sites of the blasts.

The open source investigation also discovered a Danish naval ship, the Nymfen, which had sailed toward the same area as the Russian vessels in the hours after they disappeared. It too had turned off its signal upon reaching the site.

A day later, a Swedish fighter jet took an unusual flight path over the area, followed by a Swedish naval vessel that lingered near the spot where the Nord Stream 1 pipelines later exploded.

The researchers argued that perhaps these forces went to check the site — hinting that some countries may know more than they have said thus far.

Denmark is the most tight-lipped, but security sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Times that Danish and Swedish investigators have been wary of the latest German findings, and feel a sense of pressure to counter that narrative.

On Thursday, Mats Ljungqvist, Sweden’s senior prosecutor in the case, told the Swedish newspaper Norrkopings Tidningar that although his probe had not ruled out nonstate actors, only a “very few companies or groups” could have done it, and that a state actor still seemed most likely.

And he hinted his team came across some red herrings in the course of their investigation: “Those who carried this out were careful with the traces they left behind,” he said.

Privately, Swedish, German, and Danish officials argued that investigators have reasons not to share findings, which can reveal their intelligence capabilities. Allies have also grown wary after a string of Russian espionage and infiltration cases in Europe — including one within Germany’s spy agency.

Nor may it be in anyone’s interest to share: Naming a culprit could set off unintended consequences.

Claiming Russia was behind the attack would mean it had successfully sabotaged major critical infrastructure in Western Europe’s backyard, and could spark demands for a response.

Blaming Ukrainian operatives could stoke internal debate in Europe about support for their eastern neighbor.

And naming a Western nation or operatives could trigger deep mistrust when the West is struggling to maintain a united front.

“Is there any interest from the authorities to come out and say who did this? There are strategic reasons for not revealing who did it,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a Danish naval commander and military expert at the University of Copenhagen. “As long as they don’t come out with anything substantial, then we are left in the dark on all this — as it should be.”

Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin, Jasmina Nielsen in Copenhagen and Christina Anderson in Stockholm.

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis .

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A day after securing a new term in a rubber-stamp presidential election, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he would not back down in Russia’s war against Ukraine .

With additional American aid still in doubt, Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, called for “creative, adaptable and sustainable ways” to continue arming Ukraine  and praised European allies who were trying to bolster Kyiv’s military.

Ukraine fired a volley of exploding drones  at Moscow and other targets on the final day of Russia’s presidential vote, the local authorities said, continuing a flurry of attacks timed for the election .

Elaborate Tales: As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online  to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

Targeting Russia’s Oil Industry: With its army short of ammunition and troops to break the deadlock on the battlefield, Kyiv has increasingly taken the fight beyond the Ukrainian border, attacking oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory .

Electronic Warfare: Drones have become a critical weapon for both Russia and Ukraine. But Moscow’s capability to overpower Ukrainian signals  by broadcasting on the same frequencies at higher power is putting Kyiv at a disadvantage.

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Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline?

New clues keep surfacing, and the most recent appear to implicate ukraine..

On September 26, 2022, a series of deep-sea explosions rocked the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipelines along the bottom of the Baltic Sea near the Danish island of Bornholm. The bombings severed three of the Nord Stream project’s four underwater pipelines, which had been built to transport a direct supply of natural gas from Russia to customers in Western Europe — though none was in operation at the time of the bombing thanks to tensions over the war in Ukraine . More than eight months later, multiple countries continue to conduct their own investigations into the sabotage, and while the mystery of who targeted the pipelines remains unsolved, there are growing indications that Ukraine was behind the sabotage. Below is what we know about the prime suspects and latest developments.

Ukraine allegedly planned covert attack on Nord Stream, U.S. warned it not to

Three months before the bombing of the pipeline, the U.S. was informed by a European intelligence service that Ukraine had planned to use a small team of divers to conduct a covert attack on Nord Stream, according to U.S. intelligence documents shared online by Jack Teixeira , the National Guard airman accused of leaking U.S. intelligence secrets on Discord chat servers. The Wall Street Journal reports that the CIA had been tipped off about the plan by Dutch military intelligence and that in June 2022, the U.S. warned Ukraine not to target the pipelines. The CIA later told allies the plan appeared to have been called off, but per the Journal , that conclusion might have been premature:

Weeks later, in August, the CIA informed at least seven different NATO allies that Ukraine no longer appeared to be plotting to sabotage the pipelines and that the threat had diminished, European officials said. Those officials now believe Ukraine hadn’t canceled the original plan but had modified it, selecting a new point of departure and tapping an alternative military officer to lead it.

Ukraine has repeatedly denied any involvement in the bombing. “I believe that our military and our intelligence did not do it, and when anyone claims the opposite, I would like them to show us the evidence,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a recent Bild interview . Per the Washington Post , the would-be saboteurs involved in the initial Ukrainian plot that was discussed in the leaked U.S. intelligence documents planned to keep Zelenskyy out of the loop so he would have plausible deniability.

The saboteurs might have been based in Poland

According to a June 10 Wall Street Journal report , German investigators have been examining evidence that a Ukrainian sabotage team they suspect was responsible for the bombing used Poland as a base of operations:

The probe by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office is examining why the yacht they believe was used to carry out the operation journeyed into Polish waters. Other findings suggest Poland was a hub for the logistics and financing of  last September’s undersea sabotage attack  that severed the strongest bond tying Berlin to Moscow. Poland, which is conducting its own inquiry, has struggled for months to learn what Germany is investigating.

German officials told the Journal they have found no evidence, at least not yet, that the Polish government was aware of the operation. The investigation has uncovered a lot more about the movements of the sailing yacht they believe the saboteurs used, however:

German investigators have fully reconstructed the entire two-week long voyage of the Andromeda — the 50-foot white pleasure yacht suspected of being involved in one of the biggest acts of sabotage on the continent since World War II — and pinpointed that it deviated from its target to venture into Polish waters. The previously unreported findings were pieced together with data from the Andromeda ’s radio and navigation equipment, as well as satellite and mobile phones and Gmail accounts used by the culprits — and DNA samples left aboard, which Germany has tried to match to at least one Ukrainian soldier … German investigators say they are also looking into why the yacht was rented with the help of a travel agency based in Warsaw that appears to be part of a network of Ukrainian-owned front companies with suspected links to Ukrainian intelligence, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The multiple-vessel theory

The Washington Post reported on April 3 that German law-enforcement officials believed the still-unknown saboteurs might have used multiple vessels to carry out their operation. German investigators’ earlier theory was that a small team of perpetrators used a rented 50-foot sailboat, the Andromeda , to plant explosives on the two pipelines. But as their investigation progressed, they began to suspect the boat might have been used as a decoy, and U.S. and European officials are also now skeptical that the Andromeda played a key role. One major reason for the doubt is the craft’s size and capabilities, per the Post :

Experts noted that while it was theoretically possible to place the explosives on the pipeline by hand, even skilled divers would be challenged submerging more than 200 feet to the seabed and slowly rising to the surface to allow time for their bodies to decompress. Such an operation would have taken multiple dives, exposing the Andromeda to detection from nearby ships. The mission would have been easier to hide and pull off using remotely piloted underwater vehicles or small submarines, said diving and salvage experts who have worked in the area of the explosion, which features rough seas and heavy shipping traffic.

Also according to the Post , investigators have confirmed that traces of military-grade explosives found during a search of the Andromeda in January matched the explosive used on the pipelines — but that the evidence might have been planted aboard the boat. Some investigators also doubt that a team skilled enough to blow up the pipelines while evading detection would be sloppy enough to leave that evidence behind, while others believe it was possible they were indeed that careless.

In early March, The Wall Street Journal reported that several large questions remained unanswered regarding the possible use of the Andromeda:

A key operational question investigators are looking into is whether the small boat could have carried the explosives and other supplies needed and whether the six people known to have been aboard would have been enough to carry out the attack, the German government official said. Another possibility is that the boat was part of a larger operation. They are also asking whether the mission was state-sponsored or a private effort, the official added.

It appears those concerns were justified. Investigators reportedly came to focus on the Andromeda after getting a tip from a western intelligence service, then ultimately theorized that a team of six people — five men and one woman — carried out the sabotage using the yacht, which had been hired by a Polish-registered company investigators believe was controlled by a wealthy Ukrainian. The team apparently used forged passports and embarked in the rented yacht on September 6 from the German port city of Rostock. The yacht later docked at a harbor without nighttime surveillance cameras in Wiek on the German island of Rügen, then visited the tiny Danish island Christiansø, which is very close to the site of the pipeline bombings.

German officials have publicly warned against forming conclusions based on the details revealed in media reports.

What is the mysterious object?

Denmark has reportedly found , and is in the process of salvaging, a mysterious object next to one of the damaged Nord Stream 2 pipelines. The Switzerland-based pipeline operator, Nord Stream 2 AG, has agreed to a request from Danish authorities to help identify it — though Denmark has already said the object may be a maritime smoke buoy, Bloomberg reported on March 26.

Was it some pro-Ukraine group?

In early March, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials had recently seen new intelligence suggesting that a pro-Ukraine but not necessarily Ukraine-backed group was behind the sabotage. According to the Times , the unnamed U.S. officials who have reviewed the intelligence said the group was likely made up of Ukrainian and/or Russian nationals who were opponents of Russian president Vladimir Putin but there was no evidence of direct links between the saboteurs and Ukraine’s leadership. (Ukraine has repeatedly denied any involvement in the bombings.) The divers in the saboteur group were not currently working for military or intelligence services, but they might have been trained by them in the past, according to the intelligence.

The Times also reported that “U.S. officials who have been briefed on the intelligence are divided about how much weight to put on the new information” but are now more optimistic that European and U.S. intelligence agencies will be able to get to the bottom of what happened.

A Washington Post report on the intelligence added that “a senior western security official said governments investigating the bombings uncovered evidence that pro-Ukraine individuals or entities discussed the possibility of carrying out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines before the explosions.”

What about a false-flag operation?

U.S. and German officials have continued to emphasize that it remains possible the sabotage was disguised to look as if it were perpetrated by someone else. Ukrainian officials have stressed this possibility as well — naming Russia as the likely sponsor — but no evidence has been put forward to support the theory. If it had been a false flag, it’s conceivable any government could have been behind it.

Why not Russia?

After the sabotage, Poland and Ukraine immediately fingered Russia as the culprit, and both the U.S. and other NATO allies speculated as much themselves. U.S. and European intelligence agencies have reportedly been unable to find any conclusive evidence of Russia’s involvement, however. It also remains unclear what Russia would have had to gain from disabling its own pipeline, which it helped build and had already shut off.

Or maybe it was the United States all along?

Amid Russia’s buildup on the Ukrainian border in early February of last year, President Biden warned that “If Russia invades … again, then there will no longer be Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Some have interpreted that statement as a kind of advance admission of guilt, including American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh , who last month published a report on his Substack alleging the U.S. had conducted a covert strike on the pipelines. Hersh’s supposed bombshell, which was quickly endorsed by Kremlin officials and Russian state media, primarily relied on what appeared to be a single unnamed source who, Hersh wrote, had “direct knowledge of the operational planning” for the sabotage. The White House has rejected his post as “complete fiction,” and some members of the open-source intelligence community have detailed numerous holes in Hersh’s assertions.

The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill offered a more open-minded reading of the allegations, noting that Hersh might have screwed up the facts but not the premise. Scahill points out that the U.S. has authorized and then lied about numerous covert actions throughout its history and that recent disclosures to the media about intelligence pointing to Ukrainian partisans may be an example of “narrative washing.” At this point, however, there is no evidence linking the U.S. to the sabotage.

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A global mystery: What’s known about Nord Stream explosions

FILE - Pipes at the landfall facilities of the ‘Nord Stream 2' gas pipline are pictured in Lubmin, northern Germany, on Feb. 15, 2022. Russia clashed with the United States and other Western nations Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023 over the Kremlin’s call for a U.N. investigation of last September’s sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Western Europe. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

FILE - In this picture provided by Swedish Coast Guard, a leak from Nord Stream 2 is seen, on Sept. 28, 2022. The U.N. Security Council on Monday, March 27, 2023, declined a Russian request to investigate the blasts on the pipelines that move natural gas from Russia to Europe under the Baltic Sea. The pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, are majority-owned by Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom. (Swedish Coast Guard via AP, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s a major international mystery with global consequences: Who was behind the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year in the Baltic Sea?

The answer has broad implications for European energy security but could also threaten Western unity over backing Ukraine in defending itself from Russia’s invasion . Or, it might shatter Russian and Chinese attempts to fix the blame on a hypocritical West.

Yet, nearly six months after the sabotage on the Russia-to-Germany pipelines, there is no accepted explanation. And a series of unconfirmed reports variously accusing Russia, the United States and Ukraine are filling an information vacuum as investigations into the blasts continue.

A look at the pipelines and what’s known about the explosions.

WHAT ARE THE NORD STREAM PIPELINES?

The pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, are majority-owned by Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom and used to transport natural gas from Russia to Europe under the Baltic to their termini in Germany.

Nord Stream 1 was completed and came online in 2011. Nord Stream 2 was not finished until the fall of 2021 but never became operational due to the launch of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022.

WHY ARE THEY CONTROVERSIAL?

Both pipelines bypass existing routes that go through Ukraine, meaning not only that Ukraine loses income from transit fees but is unable to directly use the gas they carry.

Of perhaps greater concern to the West, the pipelines were seen as a move by Russia to gain further, if not almost complete, control over Europe’s energy supplies. Many in the West fear that Russia will use energy as a political weapon against European countries as it has done in the past with former Soviet states.

Despite those concerns and over the objections of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, the German government under former Chancellor Angela Merkel moved ahead with the construction of the Nord Stream 2 project. The Biden administration waived sanctions against German entities involved in Nord Stream 2 after securing a pledge from Germany that it would allow backflows of gas into Ukraine and would act to shut the pipeline down should Russia try to use it to force political concessions.

After Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, Germany withdrew permission for Nord Stream 2, which had not yet come online.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PIPELINES?

First, Gazprom halted gas flows through Nord Stream 1 on Sept. 2, 2022, citing issues related to European sanctions imposed against Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Three weeks later, both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 were hit by explosions that rendered them inoperable and caused significant leaks of gas that was idle in the pipelines. Some have said the blasts caused the worst release of methane in history, although the full extent of the environmental damage remains unclear.

The depth of the pipeline and the complexity of using underwater explosives lent credence to the idea that only a state actor with the expertise to handle such an operation could be responsible. But no one claimed responsibility.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosions, U.S. officials suggested Russia may have been to blame while Russia accused the United States and Britain of being behind them. Investigations by European nations, including Denmark, through whose waters the pipeline travels, and Germany have yet to yield conclusive results.

WHAT THEORIES HAVE BEEN REPORTED?

After months of few developments in the probes, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, known for past exposes of U.S. government malfeasance, self-published a lengthy report in February alleging that President Joe Biden had ordered the sabotage, which Hersh said was carried out by the CIA with Norwegian assistance.

That report, based on a single, unidentified source, has been flatly denied by the White House, the CIA and the State Department, and no other news organization has been able to corroborate it. Russia, followed by China, however, leaped on Hersh’s reporting, saying it was grounds for a new and impartial investigation conducted by the United Nations.

On Tuesday, though, The New York Times, The Washington Post and German media published stories citing U.S. and other officials as saying there was evidence Ukraine, or at least Ukrainians, may have been responsible. The Ukrainian government has denied involvement.

Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper and German public broadcasters ARD and SWR reported that investigators believed that five men and a woman used a yacht hired by a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland to carry out the attack. German federal prosecutors confirmed that a boat was searched in January but have not confirmed the reported findings.

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THOSE FOUND RESPONSIBLE?

The implications of a determination that Ukraine was behind the explosions are not entirely clear. It’s unlikely it would result in an immediate loss of Western support for Ukraine in the war with Russia, but it might dampen enthusiasm for future assistance if it was found that Ukraine or its agents carried out such an operation in European waters.

A determination that the United States or a proxy was responsible would give Russia and China additional leverage to go after the U.S. and its allies as hypocrites in their demands for the rule of the law, sovereignty and territorial integrity to be respected.

A finding that Russia was behind the explosions would lend weight to Western claims that Moscow is in flagrant breach of international law and willing to use energy as a weapon against Europe.

There is no indication of when the European investigations will be complete — and it seems improbable, given the animosity and mistrust surrounding the Ukraine conflict, that its findings will be universally accepted.

Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.

This story was first published on March 8, 2023. It was updated on March 9, 2023 to correct the spelling of Seymour Hersh’s last name.

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Navy lt. commander charged with paying boy for sex, the teen had solicited gifts from older men on a hookup app, police said., murder suspect somehow stabbed his own lawyer in court: cops, the attacked attorney said he still has no “ill will” toward his client., explosive tracings found on yacht connected to nord stream explosion, brett bachman.

Night Editor

Reuters/Oliver Denzer

German authorities investigating a Baltic Sea explosion last year that hobbled Europe’s Nord Stream pipelines said they found tracings on a suspicious yacht that may have been used to haul the explosives used in the incident, which captured international headlines last September amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Germany notified the U.N. security council of its findings Tuesday in a letter with Sweden and Denmark, Reuters reported. It remains unclear who owns the boat—the letter said simply that German intelligence agencies were probing “the suspicious charter of a sailing yacht” meant to “hide the identity of the real charterer.” The investigation remains ongoing and may last for some time.

Nord Stream sues insurers for €400m over pipeline blasts

N ord Stream is suing insurers including Lloyd’s of London for more than €400m (£345m) over explosions that tore apart pipelines used to transport Russian gas to Europe.

The Swiss-based company, which operates two pipelines known as Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea, has filed a claim at the High Court seeking damages over the 2022 explosions.

The blasts reignited tensions between Russia and the West amid fighting in Ukraine, as countries pointed fingers over who was responsible.

Danish police recently closed an investigation into suspected “sabotage” of the pipes, saying there was not enough evidence to bring a criminal case.

Sweden has also closed an investigation into the matter, although German authorities are still inquiring.

Russia and Ukraine have both denied responsibility for blowing up the pipeline.

Nord Stream is part-owned by Russian state-owned gas group Gazprom. The other owners are Western energy groups, including Engie, Gasunie, E.On and Wintershall Dea.

Lloyd’s of London’s EU subsidiary, Lloyd’s Insurance Company, and Bermudan reinsurer Arch Insurance are listed as defendants in the civil case, which was filed by Nord Stream last month.

Both Lloyd’s and Arch are representative defendants, meaning several more firms who underwrote Nord Stream’s insurance policy may be liable if damages are awarded.

“We can confirm that there is a contractual dispute in the Commercial Courts in London between Nord Stream AG and the insurers of the Nord Stream gas pipeline system,” a Nord Stream spokesman said.

“However, we ask for understanding that we are not in a position to provide any detailed comments to the legal proceedings.”

According to the legal claim, first reported by the Financial Times, Nord Stream estimates that the cost of repairing the pipeline and replacing the lost gas inventory is up to €1.35bn.

It is seeking to claim €400m of this back from insurance policies.

One of the pipelines looked “mangled” in one area following the blast, according to the claim, but “appeared smooth” and “to have been cut” in another area.

The pipeline was insured using both primary and secondary insurance, which means the primary insurers must pay out damages before the secondary insurance kicks in.

According to reports, Nord Stream is claiming the blasts should trigger both primary and secondary insurance payouts. Lloyd’s and Arch are yet to file their defence of the claim.

A Lloyd’s spokesman said: “Lloyd’s is not at liberty to discuss individual policies or policyholders, nor can it comment on matters in litigation.”

Arch Insurance declined to comment.

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Investigators searching for answers behind explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines last year said a rental yacht may be linked to the incident, while some officials have ruled out Russian involvement. WSJ explores what we know so far. Photo composite: Danish Defence Command via Reuters/Uwe Driest

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March 13, 2023

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Nord Stream sues insurers in London over 2022 pipeline blasts

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