[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_01]: This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics and intrigue.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr and Matt Fulton.

[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_03]: On today's podcast myself and Matt are joined by investigative journalist Florian Flade

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_03]: from Tuckershow.de which is the German public broadcasters media outlet and we discuss his

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_03]: investigative journalism work on the Nord Stream Pipeline attack and we find out all the

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_03]: latest evidence about who may be responsible for it.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Stay tuned to find out more.

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[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Without further ado let's begin.

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[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the podcast Florian how are you doing?

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing really fine thanks for having me.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah it's great to have you on now where are you based in Germany?

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_04]: I am based in Berlin.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_03]: You're in Berlin.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Excellent.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_03]: So you're coming from us from Berlin.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_03]: So today's a very international conversation.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_03]: We've got Matt in the US, me in London, you in Berlin.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_03]: It's almost like a spy movie in itself.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_03]: I just see somebody in Vienna and Moscow and then we're covered really.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_03]: But there we go.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_03]: So Florian just for the benefit of listeners who may not have heard our previous interview

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_03]: could you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes I'm an investigative journalist working for the German public broadcaster IRD

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_04]: and I am working in an investigative unit of several reporters and I cover topics regarding national security

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_04]: meaning terrorism, extremism, espionage, intelligence related stuff, also cyber, some crime investigations that I did.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah well today we're here to talk about the Nord Stream attack

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_03]: and that's also why Matt's joining us today because he had a great interview with Shane Harris a little while ago.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_03]: So I think let's just start with a bit of an overview.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Can you just talk to us about what the Nord Stream pipelines are and why they're important

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_03]: and why they have been considered controversial as well?

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes the Nord Stream pipelines are or better say they were two pipelines

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_04]: but actually four pipes, two pipes belonging to Nord Stream 1 and two belonging to Nord Stream 2.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Both of them are natural gas pipelines running through the Baltic Sea connecting Russia with Germany

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_04]: and Nord Stream 1, the construction of Nord Stream 1 was finished in 2011

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_04]: and it was up and running so it was delivering natural gas from Russia to Germany that was then transported to other European countries.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And then there was Nord Stream 2 and the construction of Nord Stream 2 was finished in 2021

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_04]: and the main reason why it was constructed is to increase the gas delivery from Russia to Germany.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, Nord Stream 2 was not in operation yet due to some bureaucratic issues within the European Union

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_04]: and of course there were also American sanctions regarding Nord Stream 2

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_04]: because it was a very controversial project, energy project and yeah, this is what Nord Stream was

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_04]: and it was highly controversial especially in Eastern Europe.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Several Eastern European governments opposed the construction of Nord Stream so did the US government.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_04]: They warned that Mr Putin would use the gas delivery system as a weapon to blackmail states

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_04]: and they just said Mr Putin would get too much power over the European energy market

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_04]: and there was also another reason why Nord Stream was highly controversial

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_04]: and that was because of the transit fee.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_04]: So many companies, many governments earned a lot of money because the Russian gas

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_04]: before the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines was running through their country, Ukraine for example.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_04]: So there was of course there was transit fee and that meant the construction of the both Nord Stream pipelines

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_04]: meant that this gas was directly flowing from Russia to Germany so no more transit fees, so less money

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_04]: and the gas flow would bypass several countries.

[00:05:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Florian thanks for coming on the show again, talking about your great reporting, it's wonderful to speak with you.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I was just wondering if you could talk through some of the lead up to the attack.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I understand there were some indications passed from Dutch intelligence that something may be coming toward the pipeline.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so me and my colleagues, we have been investigating this case from a journalistic side for two years now

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_04]: and we heard in our investigation that the Dutch military intelligence service

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_04]: passed some information to the US side in the summer of 2022.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So several months before the attacks happened, we heard that the CIA obtained information

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_04]: regarding a possible Ukrainian plot to blow up the pipelines.

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And the Dutch intelligence service told the Americans, that's what we heard.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_04]: The Ukraine or Ukrainians, Ukrainian commando is planning to blow up the pipelines.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_04]: They want to use, they want to rent a boat in Scandinavia.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_04]: They want to rent a boat in especially in Sweden.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard Sweden was mentioned and they would then would use divers to dive down to set some explosive devices on the pipelines to blow them up.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And we heard that this information contained a certain date, meaning that this attack would happen in June of 2022.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thank you for that.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Can you talk to us about the actual attack itself and sort of what happened and the similarities to this Ukrainian attack plan?

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so at the end of September 2022, there were some bubbles coming up in the Baltic Sea.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_04]: In the early morning hours, there was some seismographic activity noticed similar to an earthquake in the Baltic Sea.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, this was the result of an attack of a bomb attack, an attack that was done with explosive devices

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_04]: in the depth of about 70 to 80 meters in the Baltic Sea, so on the ocean ground.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, somebody blew up both of the North Stream pipelines and the pipes, they burst it open,

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_04]: so the natural gas was flowing out of it creating these bubbles in the ocean.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a, I think it was a Swedish and also Danish military helicopters flying over their military planes and taking footage

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_04]: that we could all see then on the news.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_04]: The bubbles were coming up in the ocean and first people had no idea if this was just an accident,

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_04]: but within a few days, the people that were looking into this case were sure that this was not an accident,

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_04]: but it was an attack.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Somebody had planted explosive devices and yeah.

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_03]: How deep down are those pipes?

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, 70 to 80 meters deep, so it's not that deep to be honest.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean the Baltic Sea is not that deep, so yeah, 70 to 80 meters.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_04]: And what I learned in my investigation is that these pipes, they are not from the whole length of the pipes,

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_04]: they are not all out there on the ocean ground visible.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Some parts of the pipes are buried in sand just to give them more stability,

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_04]: so to have them fixed on the ocean ground, but especially these areas where the explosive devices were planted,

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_04]: the pipes were basically laying open and free in the ocean.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So most of the investigation centers around this sailing yacht called the Andromeda.

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So now if you could tell us a bit about that boat, how it came into the investigation

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00]: and then if there's any information at least out in open source that's available,

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00]: that places that yacht, the Andromeda, at the location of where the pipeline was sabotaged on that day.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Do we have that connection yet?

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_04]: So we heard that German investigators, because this became a criminal investigation in Germany in October,

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_04]: so about a week or 10 days after the attack happened, the general federal prosecutor opened the case

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_04]: and so there's a police investigation, our criminal case investigation.

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard that at the end of 2022 in December, maybe early January,

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_04]: the German investigators got an information that's coming from the intelligence side

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_04]: saying that they should be on the lookout for a sailboat, a sail yacht.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And that the attackers allegedly used the sailboat for the attack

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_04]: and that they started their journey from the German Baltic coast and they rented this boat.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_04]: So the German investigators were looking into this, they were talking to several sailboats

[00:10:59] [SPEAKER_04]: and yacht charter companies on the Baltic coastline of Germany

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_04]: and in the end they did find, after a few weeks, they did find a sailboat

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_04]: that matched the description that they got from the intelligence side

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_04]: and it was the Andromeda.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just a regular sailboat, I mean hundreds, probably thousands of them are at the Baltic Sea,

[00:11:24] [SPEAKER_04]: the North Sea, they are used by private people for their sailboat journeys.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_04]: So just a regular thing that you could rent.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, this boat was rented in early September

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_04]: and it left the harbour of Rostock at the German Baltic coast

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_04]: and then there was about a 10 day journey where this boat crossed the Baltic Sea.

[00:11:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And German investigators looked into this boat,

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_04]: they did some forensic investigation on that boat

[00:11:54] [SPEAKER_04]: and they found traces of a high explosive, an explosive that could be used underwater

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_04]: and they found it on the table in that boat and in that sailboat

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_04]: there was probably the people who rented it

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_04]: and carried out the attack did not really clean the boat properly

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_04]: so that's why these traces were still left.

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_04]: They also found some fingerprints and also DNA traces

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_04]: and of course they talked to the person that rented the boat too.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So this happened late September, is that a time where one would usually take a pleasure of sailing yacht out on the Baltic for a few days?

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that decent weather around the time of year out there?

[00:12:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It is probably the last...

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_04]: If you're lucky you will get some summer weather at that time.

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_04]: And we heard that when they were going for their journey

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_04]: there were plenty of boats on the Baltic Sea.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_04]: So it was pretty busy out there, it was not like there was a lonely boat sailing the Baltic Sea.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_04]: There were probably dozens or hundreds of boats, private boats going out for the pleasure journey.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_03]: Actually on that have any eyewitnesses come forward just seeing the boat near the pipeline at all?

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Not near the pipeline but we know that there are some witnesses who came out and talked to investigators

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_04]: and saying I saw the boat and I saw the people on that boat and I can describe them to you

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_04]: in a harbour in Sweden for example and also in Denmark because there was a stop over on the island of Bornholm.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a Danish island and there was also a stop over in the Swedish harbour

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_04]: and yeah there are witnesses describing various people.

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Some witnesses were describing five men and a woman.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Some said there was probably no woman part of the team was on the boat

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_04]: and of course there was the person who rented the boat to the suspects.

[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Also saying there were several men and a woman that came to the harbour in Rostock,

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_04]: boarded the boat and then sailed off on the Baltic Sea.

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah and we know it was there because of maritime surveillance and radar is it?

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_04]: I cannot confirm. I heard that there is some information regarding radar

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_04]: especially coming from the Swedish investigation side because apparently the Swedish military, Swedish Navy

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_04]: they have a really really good radar system covering also the Baltic Sea.

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_04]: What I heard is from the German investigator side that they were looking into all the technical stuff,

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_04]: the computer that they found on the sailboat that they were able to

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_04]: basically do a reconstruction of the journey that they did.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_04]: They could follow where they have been.

[00:14:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah okay cool thank you for that.

[00:14:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Can you talk just a bit about the early suspects in the German investigation?

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah the early suspects because I mean the only thing that German investigators had in the beginning

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_04]: was basically an email that was sent to the guy who then rented the boat to the attackers

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_04]: or the attack suspects.

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_04]: There was an email saying I want to rent the boat in that date

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_04]: and so and the email exchange of course.

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_04]: And in the email one of the following emails attached there were pictures of passports

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_04]: and it was just pictures taken of two passports, eastern European passports,

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Bulgarian, one of them I remember was Bulgarian passport.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_04]: So what the German investigators had they had this email address

[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_04]: and they had these passport pictures.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And so they came up in the end with a suspect.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_04]: There's some information that it was the suspect was used because of facial recognition software

[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_04]: and other means.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_04]: And one of the first suspects that came up was a Ukrainian soldier,

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_04]: a member of the Ukrainian military, a pretty young soldier.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And his picture was apparently used in one of these passports that was used to rent the boat.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And I have to say these passports in the end turned out to be forged passports

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_04]: so it's not completely fake but you know forged and they put in the picture of this Ukrainian soldier.

[00:16:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And of course then German investigators tried to find out was this man part of the team

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_04]: of the crew of the Andromeda was he present on that boat.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_04]: So this was one of the first or the early suspects.

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Forgive me, what were the with the identifications of passports?

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_03]: What nationality were the passports?

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_04]: One of them I remember was Bulgarian.

[00:16:38] [SPEAKER_04]: I think if I remember correctly the other one was a Romanian passport.

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, not no Brazilian because I know they've been faked a lot and Canadian I think the other ones.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_03]: But no, okay, Matt I'll hand to you.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was curious it comes up a few times in your reporting at least the translation that I read

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_00]: the word false flag, right?

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_00]: As to suggest that like this evidence suggests that it could be the Ukrainians but also might not be

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm not asking this to suggest that it is or it isn't one way or the other.

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I was wondering if there's more evidence to suggest that there could be something to that angle

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_00]: or that while there may have been Ukrainian individuals involved in the attack

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00]: that their loyalties may not have been to Kiev.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_04]: There are certain possibilities why this could be a false flag attack of course.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_04]: One could be that it was Ukrainian nationals who did it but they didn't know that they were hired by the Russians.

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_04]: They I don't know, they were just tricked into this and they thought they are doing it for the Ukrainian nation.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_04]: The other possibility could be that these were just fake Ukrainians and turned out to be Russian nationals.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Another possibility could be that the sailboat the Andromeda has nothing to do with the attacks

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_04]: and in the end it was I don't know a Russian ship, a Russian submarine that was involved in the attack.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_04]: There were Russian ships present in the area where these attacks later happened.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_04]: A few weeks before there's also some media coverage about this.

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Some colleagues found out that they that there were these Russian ships present at that time

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_04]: and some of them were pretty convinced that they could be a part of,

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean that these Russian ships could be involved in something like this

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_04]: because they were what you would call a dark vessel, that they would turn off their signals so you cannot really trace them back.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_04]: We talked to our sources very early on and asked,

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_04]: what do you think about false flag and they said with all the means that they have

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_04]: and all the methods that they used and also having parts of the military involved and intelligence.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_04]: They said we looked into this, we know that there were Russian ships present in that area.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_04]: We know that but the strongest indication that the ship was involved

[00:19:08] [SPEAKER_04]: is the evidence that we found on the Andromeda.

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_04]: So I mean there was the explosives, there was, yeah.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_04]: But of course there's a possibility of a false flag attack.

[00:19:19] [SPEAKER_04]: If you asked me personally, I don't think it was a false flag attack.

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_00]: It gets very complicated if you go down that road there.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of assumptions you have to make.

[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's very complicated.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I have no idea why.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean of course the Russians could blow up the pipeline

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04]: but the Russians just, you know, they switched off the gas supply.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean they could just not deliver any gas anymore.

[00:19:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Why would you blow up your own infrastructure?

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_04]: There's one thing that I could think of why might be the case

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_04]: because of course there were contracts signed, you know, contracts for gas delivery

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_04]: and not delivering gas would mean a violation of the contract

[00:20:01] [SPEAKER_04]: and this would mean like paying hundreds of millions,

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_04]: maybe today would be billions in compensation to the Europeans.

[00:20:12] [SPEAKER_04]: So maybe blowing up a pipeline would mean, I'm sorry it was a terrorist attack.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I want to deliver gas but I cannot.

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sorry to this just to bypass some form of contract violation

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_04]: but I don't think this is a strong, very strong motive

[00:20:30] [SPEAKER_04]: and I truly think it's very strange about false flag.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_04]: If you do a false flag then you have to wave the false flag at one point, you know?

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a very strange also if you look at how the Kremlin is talking about this

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_04]: how Putin is talking about it.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_04]: They never mention Ukraine.

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_04]: They always talk about the Americans who did it, British, I don't know.

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_04]: They never talk, they never pinpoint, they never point the finger to Ukraine.

[00:20:57] [SPEAKER_04]: It's very strange.

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, with the Kremlin reaction is this interesting, I call it interesting

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_03]: that article by Seymour Hirsch that's now pretty much being largely debunked

[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_03]: so far as I know where he claims that the Americans are somehow responsible for this

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_03]: but it looks like the Americans are actually trying to prevent this from what I see.

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_04]: At least that's what we heard with also several other colleagues from,

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean Washington Post in Germany does also Spiegel investigating this

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_04]: so we basically, we heard that Americans tried to prevent an attack on Nord Stream

[00:21:31] [SPEAKER_04]: even though the US government was not supporting the Nord Stream project at all

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_04]: and Mr. Biden said during this press conference

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_04]: there's this famous press conference where he said

[00:21:42] [SPEAKER_04]: we will end Nord Stream

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_04]: and then he was asked by a journalist colleague

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_04]: how will you do this?

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And the president said believe me we have the means of doing this

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_04]: but he probably meant more sanctions and more economic pressure to prevent the project

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_04]: and not blowing it up.

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, totally.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Is there any more information on the new suspects and the German investigation that we haven't covered?

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_03]: Because I know one of them in particular is a professional scuba diver.

[00:22:12] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, this is pretty much the newest information that we reported on

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_04]: and it's also been reported now by other media so there's some confirmation.

[00:22:22] [SPEAKER_04]: There's also confirmation coming from German government to be honest.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So there is one main suspect in the German investigation,

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_04]: one person that is now wanted with an arrest warrant,

[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_04]: with an international arrest warrant

[00:22:32] [SPEAKER_04]: and it is a Ukrainian national

[00:22:36] [SPEAKER_04]: and this person is a professional scuba diver

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_04]: and what we heard is that in early this year

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_04]: German foreign intelligence service, the BND,

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_04]: obtained information coming from another intelligence service,

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_04]: a foreign intelligence service.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_04]: They were providing BND with some information about new suspects

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_04]: with names and some information of how the attack was carried out

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_04]: but we also heard that this foreign intelligence service told the German side

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_04]: you cannot use this information in the criminal investigation

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_04]: for reasons of source protection.

[00:23:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So we want our source to be protected but we think these people did it.

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_04]: So there were names on this paper or whatever they sent over.

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So the German side looked into these new suspects

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_04]: and apparently there is some indication that one of them was present on the Andromeda

[00:23:35] [SPEAKER_04]: and this is a person, this Ukrainian scuba diver

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_04]: where the German investigators think that he was present in Germany.

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_04]: There was a car that came into this speed trap camera,

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_04]: how do you say it in English?

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a speed camera.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, speed traps.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, speed traps.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_04]: So a vehicle was caught in this speed trap in September 2022

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_04]: so right at the time around where the attacks happened in Germany,

[00:24:06] [SPEAKER_04]: in northern Germany at the Baltic coast

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_04]: and the German investigators found out this car belongs to a transport company

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_04]: to some kind of a transport company from Ukraine.

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's a car with a Ukrainian car registered in Ukraine

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_04]: and the driver of that vehicle, he was driving back and forth between Ukraine and Germany several times.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_04]: So the next time he came to Germany, he was questioned by the police

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_04]: and he was asked, did you transport some people to the Baltic coast in September 2022?

[00:24:40] [SPEAKER_04]: And the driver, that's what we heard.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_04]: The driver said, yes, I did.

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_04]: I did transport some people to the Baltic coast.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_04]: I have no idea who they are.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_04]: I have no idea what they did.

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not involved in this attack at all.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_04]: And then German police presented him with several pictures

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_04]: and on one picture he, when they showed him one picture, he said, that's the guy that I remember.

[00:25:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, of course there's also this picture taken by the speed trap

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_04]: and apparently you can see this Ukrainian suspect sitting right next to the driver on that picture.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh wow.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and he's a very professional scuba diver.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_04]: He was part, he was a diving teacher.

[00:25:24] [SPEAKER_04]: He was part of a diving school in Ukraine in Kiev.

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_04]: And we also heard that the woman, there's also a woman suspect

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_04]: even though there's no arrest warrant for her yet, but she's also part of this diving school in Ukraine.

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Also a very professional diver.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I was going to ask you, with the diving in the Nord Stream pipeline,

[00:25:48] [SPEAKER_03]: does it require any kind of specialist diving

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_03]: or could literally pretty much any normal diver, but with some experience of explosives be able to go down there?

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there was a lot of controversy about this

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_04]: and also in Germany people were saying, you know, it's not possible to do this with a, you know, for divers

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_04]: to go all the way down there to place some explosives.

[00:26:07] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's too deep and you cannot do it with a sailboat and several divers

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_04]: and you would need hundreds of kilos or even tons of explosives.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_04]: And to be honest, this is all not true.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there were some experts, they were talking to the investigators,

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_04]: talked to several experts about this.

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_04]: They said, what would you need?

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_04]: What is the amount of explosives and can you do it as a diver?

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you go down there and plant the explosives devices?

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And you can.

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And we did a documentary last year about the Nord Stream attacks

[00:26:38] [SPEAKER_04]: and we hired divers to go down.

[00:26:42] [SPEAKER_04]: And these divers, they went down, they took our cameras, they went down,

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_04]: they found the pipeline, they were diving down the pipeline.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_04]: So you can do it.

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And to be honest, there are divers, military divers that can go even deeper than that,

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_04]: like 70 or 80 meters even deeper.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_04]: You can do it.

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_04]: It is dangerous.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, it's dangerous to do it and you have to, you know,

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_04]: to have the certain skills and you do it with a mixture of certain oxygen.

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not easy doing it and going down and going up again takes hours.

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_04]: And the time that you have to operate in that depth in the ocean

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_04]: is probably around 20 to 30 minutes only.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_04]: You can work down there, but you can.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_04]: You can go down and do it.

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And just remember from what we know, the Andromeda sailboat,

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_04]: the journey was about 10 days or even longer.

[00:27:32] [SPEAKER_04]: So it was not like they did it in two days or three days.

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_04]: So it looks like they had some time doing this.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll be right back.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Just basically wonder as well with the explosive they used.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Has there been any indication of like whether it was a remote or a timed explosive?

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_04]: And I have not heard that the investigators know for sure.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_04]: I heard that the suspicion is that they used a time detonator.

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that would make some sense because yeah,

[00:28:19] [SPEAKER_03]: you wouldn't want your boat over that as that goes off, would you?

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_04]: And some people say it's too deep to have it to do it to detonate it

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_04]: via remote segment too far, too far out in the ocean to do it from the coastline.

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_04]: But one thing when it comes to the explosives is what I've found really,

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_04]: really interesting.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_04]: German investigators came down to the conclusion that you would need for

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_04]: for every place where you put the explosive device to blow up all of these four pipelines

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_04]: for every single explosive device, you would need about 20 kilos to 25 kilos of explosives.

[00:28:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And you have four places where they put the devices so that would turn out to be just 100 kilos of explosives.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And of course you can transport 100 kilos with a sailboat.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_03]: And would they've had to do that over successive dives?

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Or could they've done it in one?

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Successive dives I think.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:29:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Tina, do we know what time the explosion happened?

[00:29:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, at my time.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Very early, very early mornings.

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, very early morning.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so it would have been covered by darkness, etc.

[00:29:31] [SPEAKER_03]: for that to happen.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, that's interesting.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's this interesting narrative arc I guess that developed over the course of your reporting,

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_00]: at least reading it, you know, over a couple years, the iterations of it,

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_00]: of a growing divide between, say, German authorities who are quite keen to follow the evidence that points to the Ukrainians, right?

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Versus let's say the Polish authorities who are, you know,

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00]: oh here's this list of suspicious Russians that we think you should look at.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Or oh, here's this suspect in Warsaw that the Germans want.

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Oops, he left the country before we could get to him.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps, you know, not as keen to follow the evidence towards a conclusion that, you know, they wouldn't really like.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I was wondering if you could talk to that sort of split and whether that would prevent us from getting some sort of final answer of what happened here?

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean all the people that are involved in this investigation also the German government know that this is a very, very sensitive topic.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean we're talking about probably a state being involved behind all this.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, when it comes to NATO, to the EU and to alliances and the question should be support Ukraine.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, this is all very, very controversial of course.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the thing with the Polish government or the Polish authorities, it's quite interesting.

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard last year that the German investigation found out that there was a stopover in Poland.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And that the boat was present in a Polish harbor.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_04]: So of course we asked the Polish authorities, we have some colleagues in Poland and we asked them, is that true?

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you confirm that the Andromeda sailboat was present in Poland?

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And first they wouldn't answer, then they would in a way confirm it and in the end they confirmed and said, yeah, of course the sailboat was present in Poland

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_04]: and there was a stopover and it was even checked by the Polish coast guard.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_04]: And we had an interview, it's in our documentary with somebody high up in the Polish interior ministry,

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_04]: someone who is responsible for security issues within the Polish authorities.

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And he gave us an interview and he said, the people on the boat, they were just tourists.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_04]: None of them had any training in doing carrying out such attack.

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And I was wondering how do you know?

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, of course even if the Polish coast guard were just checking them just regularly because there were foreigners coming with a boat to Poland,

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_04]: just a regular check, how would you know what the skill set of these people is all their training?

[00:32:16] [SPEAKER_04]: How do you know?

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_04]: So very strange but he gave it on camera.

[00:32:20] [SPEAKER_04]: We have that interview, we have it in the documentary.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_04]: It was very, very strange.

[00:32:24] [SPEAKER_04]: And then in the end we also heard that the German investigators asked the Polish side,

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_04]: can you please provide us with the CCTV footage from the harbour?

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you give it to us?

[00:32:37] [SPEAKER_04]: The Polish side just wouldn't answer, they wouldn't send it over.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And then later they said all the CCTV footage is gone, it's deleted because of data protection rules and whatever.

[00:32:47] [SPEAKER_04]: So we don't have footage.

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And my colleague was there in that harbour, there are lots of cameras, lots of CCTV cameras.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay and then the Polish side came up and said,

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_04]: ah now we looked into this case a bit further and more detailed and now we have some information that's very interesting.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_04]: So here's a list of suspects and they were on the Andromeda and you're right, these are probably the attackers,

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_04]: but they're all Russian nationals and they are Russian intelligence people.

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And the German side was like, why did holiday people turn into Russian intelligence operatives?

[00:33:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And they looked at this list of names and what I heard from the source was,

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_04]: yeah, the German side did not believe that this was just real.

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_04]: They would just come up with some very, very common Russian names and would just say,

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_04]: so let's say there's Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Ivanov, he's FSB.

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe there is a Sergei Ivanov in the FSB, probably there is,

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_04]: but it's not something that the German investigators could really work with.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, it's very suspicious behaviour from the Polish side to be honest.

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, now there's this prime suspect and this prime suspect lived, he's a Ukrainian,

[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_04]: but he lived in Poland. He lived in a small town south of Warsaw and he has a wife,

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_04]: he has children and he lived there.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_04]: We heard that he moved there just after the attacks, just at end of 2022 that he moved to Poland.

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, the German side in June they asked the Polish authorities to arrest this guy.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_04]: They said, this is our prime suspect, here's the arrest warrant.

[00:34:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Can you please arrest him?

[00:34:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And first the Polish prosecutor, he was kind of, yeah, I'm going to look into this, let's see,

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_04]: and then he was gone, the prime suspect was just gone.

[00:34:50] [SPEAKER_04]: And he left Poland for Ukraine and my colleagues from magazine Deszpiegel,

[00:34:57] [SPEAKER_04]: they reported that he was even transported in a Ukrainian diplomatic car registered to the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw.

[00:35:06] [SPEAKER_04]: And he left Poland and now he is in Ukraine maybe, possibly.

[00:35:12] [SPEAKER_04]: So he was not arrested.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_04]: The Polish side said, sorry, we were just too late to arrest him, he's gone.

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_04]: And then, yeah, the new head of state, the new head of government of the new Polish government, Mr. Donal Tust,

[00:35:28] [SPEAKER_04]: he posted on X, you know, all the people talking about Nord Stream, they should just apologize and shut up.

[00:35:35] [SPEAKER_04]: So you see, it's a very, very clear message to the German government.

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_03]: So very interesting.

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_03]: So it's sort of feeling like it could have been a joint Polish-Ukrainian operation,

[00:35:50] [SPEAKER_03]: sort of what the picture I'm forming here.

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_04]: That could be the case.

[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's still the question, why was there the stopover in Poland at the Polish coastline?

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Why did the boat go to come to Poland?

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Was there any reason to go there?

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Was there a reason to switch, you know, operatives on the boat?

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Was there to put some equipment, some more explosives on the boat because they need more?

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why they were in Poland, but I don't think that the Polish government

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_04]: or the Polish authorities are quite interested in investigating this.

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it's very interesting.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_03]: And has there, I mean, with this idea of it potentially being like Ukrainian-led,

[00:36:31] [SPEAKER_03]: has there been any information about what level the Ukrainians may have sanctioned this attack?

[00:36:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Is there a possibility that Zelensky, President Zelensky didn't know about this

[00:36:39] [SPEAKER_03]: and somebody sort of operated, because this was in the very early stages of the war.

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_03]: So could have somebody have kind of gone on their own prerogative?

[00:36:46] [SPEAKER_03]: Or is there evidence to suggest that Zelensky did somehow sanction this?

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_04]: There's the reporting from Wall Street Journal that Mr Zelensky knew about this attack plan

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_04]: and that he then tried to stop it

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_04]: and that this was basically a plan set up by the Ukrainian military,

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_04]: by the Ukrainian chief of staff back then, Mr Saluzhniy

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_04]: and that Mr Zelensky tried to stop it and then they did it anyways.

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_04]: So kind of a rogue operation.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if that's true.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I heard some people in Germany also saying that this is the information that they have.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm from the investigator side saying,

[00:37:27] [SPEAKER_04]: could very well be that this was the case.

[00:37:31] [SPEAKER_04]: What I heard pretty early in our investigation from a source was

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_04]: that they believed that this plan was set up even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_04]: So that there was a plan that they created right after the construction of Nord Stream,

[00:37:50] [SPEAKER_04]: but that they did not use it and then the war started, the invasion happened

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_04]: and then that some elements within Ukrainian military and intelligence said

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_04]: we should carry out this plan.

[00:38:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And that the Ukrainian side, this was reported also last year or earlier this year,

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_04]: the Ukrainian side presented via intelligence channels,

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_04]: so back channels, so to say, to the German side, their own main suspect.

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_04]: And it is a man named Roman Chevinsky

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_04]: and Roman Chevinsky is a former Ukrainian intelligence operative.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And he was a high ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer who is on trial in Ukraine

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_04]: because he apparently did something that he should not have done.

[00:38:45] [SPEAKER_04]: So he, you know, he was basically the Ukrainian side.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_04]: That's what we heard.

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_04]: They presented him kind of as a rogue figure, someone who just did stuff on his own.

[00:38:57] [SPEAKER_04]: There's this very crazy operation also before the Russian invasion where they tried to trick some Wagner mercenaries

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_04]: and tried to arrest them and try to, you know, that was a Ukrainian intelligence operation

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_04]: via Belarus, via Minsk.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_04]: A very crazy thing if you look at that story.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And the Ukrainian prosecutor said that Mr. Chevinsky was involved in this

[00:39:25] [SPEAKER_04]: and that he violated some of the orders that were given to him.

[00:39:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And he was not, you know, acting on orders of the Ukrainian intelligence or military.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_04]: So this is why he is put on trial.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_04]: And we heard the Ukrainian side said that this man was involved in Nord Stream,

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_04]: in a Nord Stream attack.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course, he denies it or let's say the other way, he does not confirm it.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_04]: It's not like he's completely denying it.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_04]: He talked to some journalists, but he does not confirm that he was involved in it.

[00:39:58] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's very convenient to say for the Ukrainian government

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_04]: that because this guy is on trial anyways, so they can just tell the German government,

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_04]: yeah, we know, I mean, it was this guy and he didn't follow our orders.

[00:40:12] [SPEAKER_04]: He was not doing it on the orders of the Ukrainian government.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't worry, we will put him in prison.

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_00]: What has been the reaction in Germany to this evidence and have,

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I think I know the answer here, but have pro-Russian political entities used it

[00:40:29] [SPEAKER_00]: to argue against providing support for Ukraine?

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Of course they did.

[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_04]: Everyone is interested in who did it.

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a very controversial thing.

[00:40:39] [SPEAKER_04]: It's a very interesting criminal case.

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, certain political parties, politicians,

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_04]: they are out now saying, okay, if there is enough evidence that Ukrainian nationals

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_04]: or even the Ukrainian state was involved, then we should rethink our support for Ukraine.

[00:41:00] [SPEAKER_04]: We should consider, you know, not supporting Ukraine because they blew up our pipeline.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_04]: They blew up energy infrastructure that was very important to Germany.

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, that's the case.

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Very right-wing politicians do that, very left-wing politicians do that right now.

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_04]: And for some people in Germany, it is a very important topic.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, they want to know who did it and are these people responsible that at least for a certain time,

[00:41:27] [SPEAKER_04]: energy prices went up?

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_04]: To be honest, energy prices are back again at the level where they were even before the Russian invasion.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_04]: So, German government was quite successful in, you know, getting new sources of energy.

[00:41:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And the truth is also, it was the Russian side who stopped delivering gas even before the pipelines blew up.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_04]: The Russian side came up with this explanation or whatever lie that they cannot deliver gas

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_04]: because something had to be redone, some reconstruction on the pipeline.

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_04]: So they stopped delivering gas in summer of 2022.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And most people believe, also German government believes, that Kremlin did it just to raise the pressure.

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Just, you know, to raise the pressure on Germany, you know, there's the winter is coming up, prices are going up.

[00:42:18] [SPEAKER_04]: So that's why they did it.

[00:42:20] [SPEAKER_03]: This is, I must admit, this has been one of the things that's always fascinated me about this case

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_03]: because for it to be a sanctioned attack by the Ukrainian government,

[00:42:28] [SPEAKER_03]: they would have been aware of the diplomatic risk of this.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_04]: I think so.

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why for me, I think like the rogue, it being over rogue operation or a Russian operation kind of for me,

[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_03]: because I think the Russians have a lot to gain from this because if there is diplomatic fallout,

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_03]: then obviously it means less help for Ukraine and that helps the Russians.

[00:42:50] [SPEAKER_03]: That's, I've always get stuck there for me on this thing.

[00:42:54] [SPEAKER_04]: But just remember, I mean, there's a, you can look it up.

[00:42:57] [SPEAKER_04]: There was also a press conference.

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Our chancellor, Chancellor Scholz, he went up to a company to Siemens, a big company in Germany.

[00:43:05] [SPEAKER_04]: He went to Siemens because Siemens was providing, there was this centrifuge,

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_04]: some kind of thing that you would need, you know, for the pipeline to work again,

[00:43:15] [SPEAKER_04]: because apparently Russia said we need the pipeline to be cleaned in a way or whatever to deliver gas again.

[00:43:24] [SPEAKER_04]: And they said Germany is not delivering the equipment to do this.

[00:43:31] [SPEAKER_04]: So the chancellor went up to Siemens, to the company with a bunch of journalists,

[00:43:37] [SPEAKER_04]: and he was standing right next to that equipment that you would need.

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And he would say, here it is, we can deliver it to Russia.

[00:43:45] [SPEAKER_04]: You could use it, you know, to make Nord Stream, you know, work again.

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_04]: So what's the reason?

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_04]: The German government now says the chancellor did it to prove that Russia is just lying,

[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_04]: that this equipment is there and it can be delivered to Russia and there's no problem.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_04]: But just imagine you are the Ukrainian government.

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_04]: You're in Kiev seeing this.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_04]: You see the German chancellor in, I think it was in August.

[00:44:14] [SPEAKER_04]: It was a few weeks before the Nord Stream attack.

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_04]: You see the German chancellor standing right next to this equipment,

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_04]: begging the Kremlin basically to restart the gas flow through the pipeline.

[00:44:27] [SPEAKER_04]: So if, and then you are sitting there in Kiev thinking, oh my God,

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_04]: this German government is still willing to do business with Putin

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_04]: and they are still, you know, willing to buy his energy and his gas.

[00:44:40] [SPEAKER_04]: So maybe just destroy the pipeline.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_04]: So there's no chance to do it anymore yet.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_04]: You just, you know, take the decisions for the Germans.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_04]: So in the end.

[00:44:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I see that rationale from the Ukrainian side.

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying that they're right to do this.

[00:44:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they were if they did.

[00:45:00] [SPEAKER_00]: But that, okay, from their point of view, the European economies are addicted

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_00]: to this drug of Russian natural gas, right?

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So okay, so to get you off of it, we're going to choke off the supply

[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_00]: and force you to get clean.

[00:45:13] [SPEAKER_00]: However, as you've said, Nord Stream One was already shut down.

[00:45:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Nord Stream Two wasn't even fully operational yet.

[00:45:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And most of those natural gas pipelines flow over land through Ukraine

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_00]: and Belarus.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So you're not even choking off the supply all the way anyway.

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And that as we've said, the diplomatic risk to Ukraine

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_00]: for doing this far outweigh any benefits there.

[00:45:35] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a, I mean, it's not a good plan.

[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean they didn't do it though.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's highly likely that in the end, it was carried out

[00:45:43] [SPEAKER_04]: without the full knowledge of the Ukrainian government

[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_04]: and the full approval.

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's an embarrassment to begin with for Zelensky.

[00:45:51] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_03]: And he certainly changed senior members of the military over this war.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_03]: So there's definitely things are not going the way he wants

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_03]: and there's potential people could be doing things

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_03]: that they shouldn't be doing and stuff.

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_03]: They could explain all that.

[00:46:02] [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah.

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_00]: If this is found or at least sort of widely considered

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_00]: because we can't get a straight answer yes or no.

[00:46:10] [SPEAKER_00]: If we widely think that Ukraine's responsible for this, you know,

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_00]: pretty serious act of strategic sabotage

[00:46:17] [SPEAKER_00]: against the EU's exclusive economic zones.

[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_00]: How do you think in the future that impacts

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_00]: a potential Ukrainian membership to the EU or NATO?

[00:46:27] [SPEAKER_04]: A very good question.

[00:46:29] [SPEAKER_04]: I think, I mean, investigation is not really over.

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's one main suspect now

[00:46:35] [SPEAKER_04]: in the German investigation.

[00:46:37] [SPEAKER_04]: But the German government has promised to, you know,

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_04]: carry on with the investigation to tell the German public

[00:46:46] [SPEAKER_04]: who did it and then also to talk to the EU about it.

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that, I don't know, in some years time maybe

[00:46:53] [SPEAKER_04]: when they're talking about full membership to EU

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_04]: and maybe even NATO membership, this will come up again.

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, of course.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it was an attack.

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_04]: It was an attack on European energy infrastructure.

[00:47:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, the question will be around for a long time.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_04]: It is also, you know, within the communities

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_04]: of the conspiracy theorists or whatever.

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_04]: It's out there.

[00:47:19] [SPEAKER_04]: It's out in the political arena.

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_04]: It is even on the election side, you know,

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_04]: German elections are coming up next year.

[00:47:30] [SPEAKER_04]: This could also be, you know, a topic in the elections.

[00:47:34] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, people will ask, so who did it?

[00:47:36] [SPEAKER_04]: So why are we supporting Ukraine when they did this?

[00:47:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it's very messy affair this really isn't it?

[00:47:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, some people say it's like the Agata Christie novel

[00:47:49] [SPEAKER_04]: and what is really interesting is I mean, nobody died.

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_04]: It's an attack without any dead people laying around.

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_04]: But it's still, it's a very interesting case.

[00:48:02] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, indeed.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Matt, was there anything else you wanted to add?

[00:48:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Because I feel like we've covered pretty much most of it.

[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_03]: Is there anything else to add?

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_00]: No, that was, it's a very interesting caper.

[00:48:13] [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned Agata Christie.

[00:48:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how much the German authorities would like

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_00]: maybe a French speaking detective coming in to solve it for them.

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know.

[00:48:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a fascinating story.

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And I really love reading all your reporting on it.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Really, really good stuff.

[00:48:28] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thanks.

[00:48:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for the interest and thanks for having me.

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And maybe we talk anytime soon and there's some new development.

[00:48:36] [SPEAKER_04]: I have no idea.

[00:48:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe there's something coming up.

[00:48:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Was that too?

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, indeed.

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Indeed, worth Poirot or his relatives somehow crack this

[00:48:44] [SPEAKER_03]: and we'll have to get you back on.

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_03]: But before we sign off, is there anything else you would like to add, Flora,

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_03]: and any final thoughts or anything on this that maybe we've missed

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_03]: or that's important to you?

[00:48:56] [SPEAKER_04]: I just wanted to say, there are so many great colleagues out there

[00:49:00] [SPEAKER_04]: that are reporting on this.

[00:49:01] [SPEAKER_04]: I know it's pretty hard to do investigative journalism

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_04]: on that case especially.

[00:49:08] [SPEAKER_04]: I do a lot of national security related stories

[00:49:12] [SPEAKER_04]: and I know how to talk to intelligence people

[00:49:16] [SPEAKER_04]: and to people dealing with secret stuff

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_04]: and classified documents and whatever.

[00:49:21] [SPEAKER_04]: It is really, really hard working in that area

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_04]: because almost nobody wants to talk about this.

[00:49:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Only a few people have real in-depth knowledge of these investigations

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_04]: about what the governments are talking on these back channels.

[00:49:38] [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a lot of good journalism out there,

[00:49:41] [SPEAKER_04]: people who want to try to find out what's really going on.

[00:49:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And I would just say kudos to all these colleagues out there

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_04]: and we are all doing whatever we can to present reliable information

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_04]: and information that we get from at least two sources

[00:49:58] [SPEAKER_04]: and information that's been confirmed.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_04]: It's really hard on that case.

[00:50:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Well done to all of you and to yourself, Flora.

[00:50:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Actually I don't have any good thoughts to add on

[00:50:10] [SPEAKER_03]: because as you're saying about investigative journalism

[00:50:14] [SPEAKER_03]: there's a lot of challenges in the media landscape today.

[00:50:17] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if there's anything else you'll add on that

[00:50:19] [SPEAKER_03]: because it's interesting times at the moment for journalism, isn't it?

[00:50:23] [SPEAKER_04]: It is. There is a lot of skepticism, hate even towards journalists.

[00:50:29] [SPEAKER_04]: Investigative journalism is expensive.

[00:50:33] [SPEAKER_04]: The media companies have to pay for that kind of journalism

[00:50:37] [SPEAKER_04]: and it's not easy. It's not getting easier.

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_04]: But in the end, I think what really matters is that people

[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_04]: are still interested in these stories and we see that people are reading it,

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_04]: people are listening to it, people are watching the documentaries about it.

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_04]: So just the fact that we hire these divers for the documentary

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_04]: just the fact that you can go down there.

[00:51:08] [SPEAKER_04]: You can dive down, you can operate in that depth, you can see it.

[00:51:12] [SPEAKER_04]: We prove it. We do a fact check while just hiring a divers.

[00:51:19] [SPEAKER_04]: It was an idea of a colleague of mine, it was a very simple idea.

[00:51:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Let's just hire these people and let's see if they can do it and they can.

[00:51:26] [SPEAKER_04]: This is a way to fight against these conspiracy theories to work against them

[00:51:32] [SPEAKER_04]: just to present some facts to people.

[00:51:35] [SPEAKER_03]: Excellent. Where can listeners find out more about you and your work, Flora?

[00:51:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, easiest would be just to follow me on X for my Twitter.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_04]: It's at Floria and Flade.

[00:51:47] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm also publishing in Germany, it's called tagerschau.de

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_04]: It's the media outlet of German public broadcaster, IED.

[00:51:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Just follow me on X and you will find my work there.

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_03]: Excellent. Thank you very much for your time today.

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks Floria.

[00:52:07] [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.

[00:52:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.