Posted on 08/14/2024 9:45:02 PM PDT by buwaya
In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream. ... The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise. ... In September 2022, the plotters rented a 50-foot leisure yacht called Andromeda in Germany’s Baltic port town of Rostock. The boat was leased with the help of a Polish travel agency that was set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a cover for financial transactions nearly a decade ago ... One crew member, a military officer on active duty who was fighting in the war, was a seasoned skipper, and four were experienced deep-sea divers ... Ukraine has a long history of training top civilian and military divers. A naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in the past trained deep-sea divers for the purposes of sabotage and demining. ... Armed only with diving equipment, satellite navigation, a portable sonar and open-source maps of the seabed charting the position of the pipelines, the crew set out. The four divers worked in pairs, according to people familiar with the German investigation. Operating in pitch-dark, icy waters, they handled a powerful explosive known as HMX that was wired to timer-controlled detonators. A small amount of the light explosive would be sufficient to rip open the high-pressure pipes.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
But I did assume a bigger boat.
Check out the article if you have WSJ access. Lots more details.
Sounds like the Natalie Wood story.
Was the yacht called “The Left Hand”?
The “Andromeda”, a 50-foot sailing yacht.
Straight out of Alistair Maclean.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
It must’ve been the prostitute which prompted all the secrecy and 2 years of gaslighting diversions from the truth of a drunken pleasure cruise to exact a little payback.
Or maybe it was the unlicensed skipper. Or maybe the yacht was taken without permission. Or maybe they feared imprisonment for numerous violations involving the explosives.
Or...
Uh-huh. /s
Europe sees signs of Russian sabotage but hesitates to blame Kremlin
https://www.livemint.com/politics/europe-sees-signs-of-russian-sabotage-but-hesitates-to-blame-kremlin-11716192689870.html
Bojan Pancevski , The Wall Street Journal 7 min read 20 May 2024, 02:26 PM IST
EXCERPTS:
European governments have charged some Russians and Russian proxies in smaller incidents and are getting more vocal in accusing Moscow of waging hybrid warfare, but are stopping short of accusing Russia of specific attacks.
In the most brazen suspected incidents, a lack of clear proof has prompted officials to leave cases open or declare investigations inconclusive.
Last fall, Finnish investigators linked a Chinese-registered ship, operated by a Russian crew, to the cutting of the Balticconnector natural-gas pipeline to mainland Europe.
As the investigation advanced and the ship sailed around Scandinavia back toward Russia, the Finns contacted Norwegian counterparts about their suspicions.
Norwegian authorities contemplated forcing the ship into one of their harbors for inspection, but ultimately decided they lacked clear evidence.
A Norwegian coast-guard ship shadowed the Newnew Polar Bear as it was passing sensitive marine infrastructure.
Detecting potential attacks is increasingly difficult because Russia, since launching its full-scale invasion on Ukraine two years ago, has turned more to civilians and commercial vessels to survey and possibly attack critical infrastructure such as undersea connections, offshore energy facilities, transport networks and military installations, people familiar with the cases say.
“the anchor seems to be caught on something...”
It wasn’t a drunken pleasure cruise, it was a drunken party, months earlier, where the idea was hatched.
But someone was drunk, certainly. The best ideas begin that way. Also some of the worst, but there we go.
There were certainly a lot of “violations”.
There are no prostitutes in the article, but you can add a few to the film script if you like. This would make a great movie.
Yeah, behind a paywall. Bummer.
The loss of the Nord Stream pipeline was a major blow to Germany and was therefore politically provocative as to their support for Ukraine. The passage of time has reduced that concern.
Did they pull it up, to see what it was? 😀
That’s the ukies, all right. Drunk, corrupt, drunk, devious, destructive, lawless, corrupt, drunk, lots of yachts laying around bought with America’s $$$, corrupt, drunk, evil. F UK. Long and hard.
Yuk it up, spaniard.
Wow. Of course there’s no way that the CIA would plant a bogus story with the Wall Street Journal. There’s absolutely no precedent for that. /sarc
Wait...Joe and his buddies said it was the Russkies!!!!
Russia! Russia! Russia! (how many repeated that ridiculous lie here?)
BS. Our Dee Ess did it.
Audacious, self-organizing and creative too!
And skilled in many arcane arts, like commercial diving, and demolition.
I admire these sorts. We had a few “pirates” of this stamp working for us, and when you need them, you need them.
They bought the yacht on the Baltic BTW, and these things aren’t very expensive. 300K for a military expedition of this significance is...”cost effective”.
Much of this material came from the Germans.
The CIA can certainly plant a story, but this story is everywhere, with multiple sources, but mainly German. The WSJ just has a few extra details and wrote up a nice narrative.
Lots of sources say otherwise.
Personally this story works for me because I know this sort of thing can be done on a shoestring.
You don’t need thousands of bureaucrats to make something happen. Indeed, I doubt the US deep state CAN do this, all those thousands of bureaucrats would spend years tripping over each other, instead of getting on with it.
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