Despite circumstantial and evidences and Western-media’s propaganda centering the Nord Stream sabotage, proving hands of Washington and its NATO allies behind this hydro-terrorism, the liberal US media rushed to create a proper propaganda backdrop by claiming that Ukrainian intelligence perpetrated it, in particular, the members of Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate and the Special Operations Forces. They also alleged that Colonel Roman Chervinsky, who used to lead the 5th Directorate within the Ukrainian Security Service’s Counterintelligence Department and formerly served as Deputy Head of Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate and in the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, was responsible for coordinating the operation. At the time, he was in detention on suspicion of exceeding his authority in Ukraine.
Presenting the Ukrainian special services as the suspects was quite natural for this cover-up effort, since senior officials within the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate and its head, Kirill Budanov, have made quite a few statements about the agency’s involvement in perpetrating terrorist attacks outside of Ukraine, primarily targeting Russian nationals and interests and recognized their involvement.
In his comments for The Financial Times in June 2022, Kirill Budanov was quoted as saying that these attacks and sabotage operations “are held everywhere, and they were and will be held in Russia and many other places”. This offered the Western media a pretext for making speculative claims regarding the involvement of the Ukrainian special services in perpetrating terrorist attacks against the NS1and NS2 pipelines.
West’s leading media outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Die Zeit all covered the version exposing Ukraine for its involvement in damaging three of the four branches of the Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm. The Western journalists posited that people with Ukrainian passports rented the yacht Andromeda and divers used it to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines.
According to reliable Ukrainian sources, the cover-up operation included creating a special diving team, which included, among others, Anatoly Burgomistrenko (trained in mine warfare at the Special Operation Forces’ Centre 131, military base 4456, speaks English, and has robust diving credentials), as well as Oleg Varava and Ruslan Rudenko (callsign Kapellan, Deputy Mayor of Belaya Tserkov). Sergey Kuznetsov headed the group, which also included a female diver and technician under callsign Marisha. Roman Chervinsky was placed in charge of the group and worked under Kirill Budanov’s control.
The New York Times provided a detailed account of the CIA’s involvement with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate over a period of more than ten years of cooperation between special services on intelligence matters. In this article, the newspaper also mentioned the initiative to set up a special commando force, known as Unit 2245, for carrying out targeted terrorist attacks. It was within this unit that the CIA operatives and curators trained Kirill Budanov before he headed the Ukrainian military intelligence and who enjoyed the support of the CIA and developed a wide network of contacts with it, enabling him to coordinate his efforts directly with the CIA.
According to the available data, US specialists offered organizational and technical support, including diving equipment, Romanian documents for the cover-up and explosives, and also oversaw the operation led by Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy to Ukraine Christopher W. Smith, who had previously served with ISAF. Former head of Ukrainian intelligence Vasily Burba also contributed to the operation. Having succeeded in his mission, Christopher W. Smith went on to receive an appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Eastern Europe (EE) and Policy and Regional Affairs (PRA) at the US Department of State.
The team trained in a deep-water quarry lake in the Zhitomir Region, and then travelled to Romania where its members stayed under Romanian documents in a private home not far from a Romanian Navy base in Mangalia. They continued their training there in an environment which........