In spring 2022, when Ukraine had just stopped the Russian assault on kyiv, There was a discreet meeting in the Podil neighborhood. On one side of the table, Ukrainian covert operations specialists; to the other, representatives of US intelligence. What was discussed there—according to several Ukrainian sources—was an explosive idea: sabotage the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The question is inevitable: did the CIA know about the plan from the beginning? Did you support it, tolerate it, or try to stop it? The agency categorically denies this. But the testimonies collected by the German weekly Der Spiegel paint a more ambiguous scenario.
An old thorn called Nord Stream
Nord Stream gas pipelines They connected Russia with Germany through more than 1,200 kilometers under the Balticavoiding Ukrainian territory. For kyiv, they were much more than energy infrastructure:
- They reduced income from gas transit fees
- They increased German dependence on the Kremlin
- They allowed Moscow to finance its war machine with direct exports
The United States never looked favorably on the project. At the beginning of 2022, then-President Joe Biden even warned that, if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there would be no more Nord Stream 2.”
After the start of the invasion, an old idea began to circulate again in kyiv: eliminate this Russian energy lever in one fell swoop.
“Operation Diameter”
According to Ukrainian sources cited by the German press, a meticulous plan was designed for weeks. They used a rented sailboat to go unnoticed alongside divers with diving capabilities of up to 80 meters. In addition, they used military explosives and for all this they allocated a budget of about 300,000 dollars.
The alleged mastermind would be Roman Chervinsky, a former SBU officer specialized in covert operations, later linked to the military intelligence service. In the operational field, one of the names identified by German justice is the former Ukrainian commando Serhiy K., detained in Hamburg.
According to an order from the German Federal Court of Justice, the action would have been “most likely” directed by the Ukrainian state. An uncomfortable conclusion for Berlin, which has supported kyiv with billions of euros since the start of the war.
The CIA as a listener… or something else?
The most delicate point is not who carried out the sabotage in September 2022, but what did Washington know before of it happening. According to several Ukrainian testimonies, CIA representatives attended preliminary meetings, They also exchanged technical impressions about the viability of the plan, at first they would not have expressed clear rejection.
Some participants They even interpreted the conversations as a sign of tacit approval. According to these sources, in the first meetings no warnings were heard, but rather comments such as: “It works.”
The CIA, however, has described this version as “totally and absolutely false” and maintains that the journalistic investigation is “extremely inaccurate.” Other reconstructions, such as the one reported by journalist Joshua Yaffa in The New Yorkerpoint out that many “creative ideas” from Ukraine were circulating in Washington, but that finally the plans against Nord Stream were rejected.
The chronology that emerges is this:
- Spring 2022: Contacts and technical conversations
- Early summer: U.S. stance shift
- Explicit warnings to cancel the operation
- Ukrainian refusal to arrest her
In June 2022, the Netherlands’ military intelligence service obtained information about the plan from a source in Ukraine. The warning reached both the CIA and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND).
In Berlin there was initial skepticism: the scheduled date had already passed without incident. But, according to research, the operation had simply been postponed.
From there, the American position would have been firmer. A CIA representative in kyiv would have demanded the cancellation of the plan and even transferred the pressure to the highest Ukrainian military commanders.
The outcome in the Baltic
On September 7, 2022, a sailboat set sail from Warnemünde with six men and one woman on board. Days later, seismographs in Sweden detected underwater explosions. Three of the four Nord Stream pipelines were disabled. A gigantic column of gas bubbles emerged to the surface. Sabotage changed the European energy table and raised geopolitical tension in the middle of the war.
What did Washington really know?
The versions remain contradictory. There are several plausible hypotheses:
- That agents on the ground would listen without compromising, seeking information
- That the dimension of the plan took time to reach the political leaders in the United States
- That Washington changed its position when it understood the diplomatic consequences
- What seems clear is that the story doesn’t quite fit into a simple narrative of support or total ignorance.
The central question, therefore, is not only whether the CIA knew about the plan, but when it knew it and how it reacted. Between official denial and Ukrainian testimonies a gray area opens which, four years after the explosions, continues to fuel one of the biggest strategic unknowns of the war in Europe.
