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LONDON, 11 Sept. - (ANA) - For the high-level gathering of Ukrainian military officers, there was every reason to celebrate. It was early May 2022, a month after Russia’s failed siege of Kyiv, and, having given Vladimir Putin’s forces an unexpected bloody nose, the group met for a few well-earned drinks.

Or perhaps more than a few. For as the booze flowed, talk moved on to ways to hit the Kremlin where it really hurt. How about, for example, blowing up Nord Stream 1 and 2, the twin pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea? Doing so would cost Russia billions of pounds in lost sales revenues and end Germany’s unhealthy dependence on cheap Kremlin energy. If they got caught, though, there’d be trouble: Kyiv’s European allies would hardly welcome sabotage in their own backyard.

Ordinarily, the drinkers might have woken up hungover the next day and realised they’d got carried away. On this occasion, though, what sounds like the script of an over-egged thriller became reality.

For nearly three years, German police have been trying to track down who blew up the pipeline in late September 2022. The strike left 350,000 tons of methane bubbling up to the Baltic’s surface (equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark) and sparked a huge geopolitical whodunnit.

Many presumed it was ordered by Vladimir Putin, to show Europe how fragile its energy supplies were. Others thought it might even have been orchestrated by the CIA, reverting to its Cold War playbook. Putin has suggested as much – the US has long been opposed to Nord Stream, after all.

Last month, however, following an arrest in the unlikely setting of an Italian beach resort, the world got the first glimpse of the attack’s alleged ringleader. Acting on a warrant issued by German prosecutors, Italian police swooped on a holiday complex on the Adriatic coast, detaining a 49-year-old man holidaying with his family.

Identified only as “Serhii K”, he is understood to be a retired Ukrainian sea captain and ex-secret service officer. Photographs of his court appearance – where he denied the charges – showed a muscular, shaven-headed figure being escorted back to a prison van.

German officials now plan to extradite the suspect, whom they allege headed up a six-strong Ukrainian team that planted the explosives and triggered the Nord Stream blast in September 2022. In one of their first public statements on the investigation – until now highly confidential – Germany’s federal prosecution office said: “Serhii K was part of a group of individuals who placed explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.”

His trial may also prove politically explosive. Germany is now Ukraine’s biggest military and financial backer after America. And while Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky has denied sanctioning the plot, leaks from the investigation suggest he was at least aware of it. It was also allegedly overseen by Ukraine’s former top commander General Valeriy Zaluzhny – now Kyiv’s ambassador to London – who likewise denies all knowledge.

So what exactly do the Germans think happened? Drawing on public details from the investigation, as well as reports in German and other international media, it is now possible to piece together the full outline of the police case. And it seems that, for all its drunken beginnings, “Operation Diameter”, as the sabotage plot was allegedly nicknamed, was a highly professional undertaking. Not only did it require high explosives to be smuggled across borders, they had to be planted on the seabed 80 metres below the surface – a depth reachable only by expert divers.

To that end, the six-strong Ukrainian team included four experienced deep-sea divers. The group, which was said to include civilians, hired a yacht called the Andromeda from a marina in Germany’s Baltic port town of Rostock in early September 2022. The marina employees, it seems, barely gave them a glance.

The Andromeda was a battered old Bavaria 50 Cruiser, an unflashy vessel known as “The Skoda of the Seas”. And with a woman as part of the group – allegedly one of Ukraine’s top female divers – they looked like just another band of holidaymakers enjoying some late-summer cruising. On sojourns into the Baltic, the “tourists” then planted bombs at four spots close to the Danish island of Bornholm, timed to explode on September 26.

Just a few kilos of high-grade military explosive was apparently required to rupture the pipelines. While neither were actually in use at the time – Germany had already ceased buying gas from Russia in the wake of Ukraine’s invasion – their destruction ended any possibility of the trading relationship resuming.

Better still for Kyiv, the world seemed convinced the Kremlin was to blame. Denmark’s navy said that, ahead of the blasts, it had seen Russian ships acting suspiciously around Bornholm, sailing with identification systems switched off.

But while politicians and pundits finger-pointed, Western officials already suspected Kyiv. Dutch military intelligence had got wind of the plot in June 2022, according to German media, and had alerted the CIA, who in turn had warned Zelensky’s office to call it off. His attempts to act on the alert reportedly proved unsuccessful.

Following the explosion, German police then got a second tip-off – again passed on by Dutch intelligence – identifying the make of boat used. That led detectives to the Andromeda, which still contained explosive residues plus fingerprint and DNA evidence. The bomb squad had also hired an unsuspecting taxi driver to drive them into Germany who, by chance, was photographed driving too fast by a speed camera.

Investigators tracked him down and obtained detailed descriptions of his passengers. While the squad had used false passports, border cameras had also photographed their faces which, cross-checked with the driver’s descriptions, mobile phone records and other data, allowed the Germans to piece together the perpetrators’ true identities.

Suspicions also grew that the squad had official help. A car that picked up one diver after the operation was allegedly registered to the military attaché at Ukraine’s embassy in Poland. Another suspect, who was living in Poland, fled back to Ukraine a day after Germany issued an arrest warrant, suggesting he had been tipped off.

The Andromeda crew also briefly called at the Polish port of Ko?obrzeg a week before the attack, prompting German prosecutors to ask their Polish counterparts if Ko?obrzeg was where bombs were loaded on. Poland has denied any such scenario.

German prosecutors are now understood to have issued warrants for all six suspects, who face charges of “jointly causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of infrastructure”. It is understood that the plan – which crippled the £20bn pipelines – was carried on a budget of just $300,000 (£221,000).

“I always laugh when I read speculation about some huge operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” one source told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported how the plot was originally hatched. “The whole thing was born out of a night of heavy boozing, and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the guts to risk their lives for their country.”

The five suspects who remain at large are now all believed to be back in Ukraine, which forbids extradition of its citizens. But German prosecutors – who are independent of government – are expected to seek trial for “Serhii K”, irrespective of the awkward headlines for both Berlin and Kyiv.

Asked about the bombing in 2023, when claims of Kyiv’s involvement first emerged, Zelensky insisted: “Nothing of the sort has been done by Ukraine.” However, some reports say that by the time the CIA ordered him to intervene – which he apparently tried to do – the unit was already operating in “deep cover” and therefore uncontactable, even by Ukraine’s military chiefs.

The Wall Street Journal, for its part, reported that General Zaluzhny had ignored Zelensky’s orders to halt the operation, citing Ukrainian officers and officials said to be familiar with the events. But the man himself, who has served as ambassador to London since early 2024, has dismissed suggestions of Kyiv’s involvement as “provocation.”

What is less in doubt is that Nord Stream would have been a tempting target for Kyiv. Not only was the 800-mile piece of infrastructure majority-owned and financed by Russia, its demise also forced Moscow to continue relying on a trans-Ukrainian pipeline for supplying European clients. The contract for that pipeline, which only expired this year, earned Kyiv lucrative transit fees.

Germany’s government has said little about the pending Nord Stream court case, insisting publicly that it is purely a judicial matter. However, Ed Arnold, a European security fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, believes any trial will be carefully “stage-managed”.

“The Germans will want to get to the bottom of it in the interests of justice, but it may be presented as an unsanctioned operation by a rogue unit,” he says.

With the court of public opinion also still largely backing Ukraine, he doubts that a guilty verdict “will harm German or European support” for Kyiv. However, should Russia ever now carry out a similar act of sabotage in Europe, it will be all too easy for the Kremlin to point the finger at its neighbour.

Meanwhile, one thing the Nord Stream attack has achieved, Arnold argues, is to give Western leaders a wake-up call regarding the fragility of their critical energy infrastructure. “Theoretically, we all knew that before, but it took the actual bombing to make people act,” he says. “Now Nato is working on protecting pipelines, bringing in drone surveillance capabilities and all kinds of other measures that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.”

True, that may not stop Serhii K getting a lengthy prison sentence if convicted. On returning to Ukraine, though, he will likely switch from jailbird to national hero – and, once again, the drinks may be flowing. - (ANA) -