Last September, the Nord Stream pipelines were bombed in an act of sabotage, but Ukraine, Russia and the United States all denied responsibility for the incident. Now Russia has a vested interest in the operation of those pipelines. [00:00:16] So thinking that Russia was behind it is laughable to say the least. But was the US behind it? Was Ukraine behind it? Well, more and more evidence seems to suggest that Ukrainians were actually behind the attack, something that we had suspected. And just this weekend, the Washington Post put out a report indicating and naming [00:00:36] a Ukrainian military official who they say helped coordinate the bombing. So let's give you the details of the report now before we get to it. It's also kind of important to understand the context and the importance of the Nord Stream pipelines. So there's Nord Stream one and Nord Stream two. [00:00:52] They're underwater natural gas pipelines that were specifically constructed to deliver gas from Russia to the rest of the European Union. Okay. Now, according to Al Jazeera, Russia supplied 40% of the EU's natural gas in 2021. [00:01:10] Now, the pipelines are majority owned by Gazprom, which is Russia's state controlled gas giant, which again kind of provides a little more of a reason why it would be ridiculous for Russia to bomb their own pipelines. Now, historically, gas has actually flowed from Russia to the rest of the EU [00:01:28] through what's known as transit states like Ukraine, which would earn money by allowing that transit to happen. They would collect about 2,000,000,002 to $3 billion annually in transit fees, according to CNBC. [00:01:43] But Nord Stream actually bypasses all of that because it goes around Ukraine. Gazprom promised to keep some gas flowing through Ukraine, but way less than before. And so Nord Stream one was constructed over ten years ago. Nord stream two was under construction until 2021. [00:02:02] But in February of last year, Germany halted the approval process for the pipeline, essentially rendering it dead in the water. No pun intended, except kind of pun intended. Now, that aside, here are some excerpts from the Washington Post report, which cites officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other [00:02:21] people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation as its source. So I guess a guy named Roman Chervinsky, a decorated 48 year old colonel who served in Ukraine's special operations forces, was the coordinator of the Nord Stream [00:02:38] operation, people familiar with his role said managing logistics and support for a six person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines. [00:02:54] Now, Chervinsky was reportedly not the only one who actually planned this attack. He took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to General Valery Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's highest ranking [00:03:11] military officer, said people familiar with how the operation was carried out. Now Chervinsky denies this. He says I had nothing to do with the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. I did. I did none of this right now. CIA officials communicated to Ukraine that they oppose the plan. [00:03:28] Apparently there was some communication between American intelligence. They were apparently informed that Ukraine was planning to carry out this attack last summer. Reportedly, US intelligence thought that the Nord Stream plan was canceled after that, and they were just surprised that the attack ended up happening. [00:03:45] And I should also note that the Washington Post claims that this all happened without Volodymyr Zelensky being informed about it, that it all happened behind his back, which, if true, is pretty shocking. I don't know if I believe it's true. Jake, what do you think? [00:04:02] Okay, so let's start with what we know and then we'll go to what we don't know. So our side did it. That's now become super obvious, right? First of all, logically it was obvious from day one why would the Russians bombed their own Nord Stream and cost themselves billions of dollars? [00:04:19] It makes no sense at all. And so when I heard that propaganda from day one, I was like, nope, I don't believe it. So now is it was it the Ukrainians by themselves or Ukrainians working with Americans? That's an interesting question. Sy Hersh, as reported in the past, that it was actually the Americans [00:04:38] that helped to do this. But this report of The Washington Post says that Americans tried to stop the Ukrainians from doing this. So which of those stories is true? I don't know, but it was it appears to be the Ukrainians slash maybe allies like the United States. [00:04:55] Certainly the United States was aware of a plot like this, even in this story. And try to prevent it, but wound up only delaying it for three months. So now was Zelensky involved? There's no way of knowing unless somebody in his inner circle turns right now. [00:05:12] Either way, not great for Zelensky because either he has rogue elements inside the country that make massive decisions without consulting him. Because this is not a little thing. This is not hey, should we go left or right in the battlefield over there? [00:05:28] We didn't have time to ask Zelensky. This is something that is going to piss off all of their allies. Yes, and might turn Europe against them. That is as big a decision as you could possibly imagine. So are they making those decisions without Zelensky? Because if I'm Zelensky, I'm my right over that. [00:05:46] Right. Or equally plausible is of course, Zelensky was involved, but they created a plausible deniability so that he could say, so sorry about my friends. And so I don't know which of those is true. And this guy that is charged with organizing the plot [00:06:03] now in prison in Ukraine on other charges. So I'm not sure which way that leans either. Either he's a scapegoat or Zelensky is actually pissed that they went around him and use another pretense to put him in prison, right? He's allegedly serving time for a mission that he didn't [00:06:20] have permission to undertake, but very few details about that. Yeah, that one's not about the pipeline. It's about some Russian pilot that it was that that guy was trying to get to defect, but he gave them coordinates to one of the Ukrainian airfields, and then that got bombed. [00:06:37] So they're saying that's his fault again. There's no way of knowing if he's a scapegoat or he really did do these things in a rogue way, and that's why they punish them for this. Now in Ukraine, there's t shirts saying free that guy, and he's starting to become a little bit of a hero. [00:06:53] And if you're a Ukrainian, you might be hard pressed to do the calculation of, well, is this going to alienate France and Germany in a way that hurts our chances of winning this war? You mainly probably think like, Atta boy, way to bomb that pipeline and cost the Russians all that money, right? [00:07:10] So you can see how those in the middle of a war, those kind of passions, would lead in the direction of supporting someone who bombed the Russian pipeline. Thanks for watching the video, guys. We also love it if you hit the join button below, because that makes you a member. And members allow us to be independent, honest. [00:07:26] We can be as progressive as we want, no corporate media influence. And that's all because of you guys. We love doing the show with our members. Hit the join button. Become one of the Young Turks.