A Ukrainian military officer had a central role in the undermining of the Nord Stream pipeline last year, officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe and others with knowledge of the details of the covert operation say.
There is now no talk of the involvement of Ukraine’s military and security leadership in the controversial act of sabotage, as multiple criminal investigations and U.S. and Western suspicions about the security of the energy infrastructure have probably been vindicated.
That military officer turned out to be Roman Chervinsky, a 48-year-old colonel who was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, according to people familiar with his role. He was in charge of logistics and support for a six-man team that rented a sailboat under an assumed name and used deep-sea diving equipment to plant explosive devices on gas pipelines. Their actions resulted in three explosions on 26 September 2022 that caused massive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines running from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. As a consequence of the attack, only one of the network’s four pipelines remained undamaged as winter set in.
Roman Chervinsky did not act alone and did not plan the operation, which had not been previously reported. The officer received orders from higher-ranking Ukrainian officials who ultimately reported to General Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s most senior military officer, people familiar with how the operation was conducted said.
Chervinsky, as he is supposed to, denies involvement in the pipeline sabotage and just the opposite, blaming Russia for spreading the information:
All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis, Chervinsky said in a written statement to The Washington Post and Der Spiegel, which conducted a joint investigation of his role.
The attack on Nord Stream was not aimed at undermining the Russian war machine, but at the civilian infrastructure built to provide energy to millions of people in Europe; the people who are financing Ukraine’s military campaign against Russia. Although Russia’s state-owned gas conglomerate Gazprom owns 51% of Nord Stream, Western energy companies, including those from Germany, France and the Netherlands, are its partners and have invested billions in the project. On the other hand, the situation could not be more favourable for Ukraine: Kyiv has long complained that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian pipes, depriving Kyiv of huge transit revenues.
Chervinsky was well suited for a covert mission designed to hide Ukraine’s responsibility. First, after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Chervinsky served in one of Ukraine’s special operations forces units and worked on resistance issues in Russian-occupied areas of the country. Second, he held senior positions in the country’s military intelligence service as well as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and was professionally and personally close to key military and security leaders. Third, he was also involved in other covert operations, such as in 2020. Chervinsky oversaw a complex plan to lure fighters of the Russian mercenary group Wagner to Belarus for their subsequent capture and delivery to Ukraine to face charges.
All these facts can serve as a good reputation among the top leadership of the country, and it was because of these operations that he was appointed in charge of such a complex operation as the undermining of the Nord Stream.
Chervinsky’s involvement in the Nord Stream bombing contradicts Zelensky’s public denials of his country’s involvement, as he claims that “I am president, and I give orders accordingly,” Zelensky said in press interview in June, responding to a report by The Post that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had learned of Ukraine’s plans before the attack.
But the Nord Stream operation was planned in such a way that Zelensky would not have been aware of it, people familiar with the operation say. “All of those involved in planning and execution reported directly to Zaluzhny, so Zelensky wouldn’t have known about it,” Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, said on the Discord chat platform.
Interestingly, according to people familiar with their planning, other covert Ukrainian operations targeting Russian forces, including the Russian plane operation, were also conceived to bypass the Ukrainian president. What might this mean? Most of the exquisitely crafted operations are conducted without the president’s involvement or even knowledge.
U.S. officials have sometimes privately rebuked Ukrainian intelligence and military officials for carrying out attacks that could provoke Russia to worsen the war in Ukraine. Washington’s concerns, however, have not always deterred Kyiv.
It is noteworthy, however, that knowledge of the Nord Stream operation quickly reached the military intelligence agencies of other states. For example, in June 2022, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD received information that Ukraine might be planning an attack on Nord Stream. CIA officials relayed to Zaluzhny through an intermediary that the U.S. was opposed to such an operation, which, of course, assuaged the concerns of the U.S. side. As it turned out in the end, the operation was merely postponed three months later, using a different point of departure than originally planned. Key elements of the plan, however, including the number of people in the team, as well as the use of a rented boat, diving equipment and forged documents, remained the same.
Zaluzny said the CIA never approached him directly about the Nord Stream attack in a June interview with The Post. After the surprise bombings in September 2022, Zaluzhny had a conversation with Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
He asked me, ‘Did you have anything to do with it?’ I said, ‘No.’ A lot of operations are planned, a lot of operations are going on, but we have nothing to do with it, nothing at all.
Zaluzhny suggested in the interview that Russian propagandists were trying to link him and the Ukrainian military to the operation.
However, Dutch military intelligence also told the Americans that the Ukrainians were planning an attack on another pipeline in the Black Sea, called TurkStream. On the one hand, Ukraine had nothing to do with it, according to Zaluzhny, but on the other hand, it was planning operations on similar facilities elsewhere. It is not clear, however, why this operation was never carried out. Curiously, in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country’s security services had foiled a Ukrainian attack on TurkStream, but Russian authorities provided few details and did not charge anyone in connection with the alleged plot.
It is known that the attack was planned by an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on orders from the Ukrainian special services, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
Nearly a month before the explosions, Gazprom cut off the flow of gas through Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Seven industrialised nations announced an imminent price cap on Russian oil that was expected to hit the Kremlin’s coffers.
Days before Russia invaded Ukraine, the German government did not give final approval for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after months of pressure from Washington, but Germany got half of its natural gas from Russia before the war and has long defended the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies.
At this time, Chervinsky is in custody and calls his arrest and prosecution a political retaliation for criticising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. Chervinsky has publicly stated that he suspects Andrei Yermak, one of Zelensky’s closest advisers, of spying for Russia. He also accused Zelensky’s administration of not adequately preparing the country for a Russian invasion.
In his statement, Chervinsky said, “I have devoted my entire life to the defence of Ukraine.” He called the charges against him related to the Russian airplane operation “groundless and far-fetched, which I will definitely prove in court.”
