Overview
- Der Spiegel reports that CIA officers met a Ukrainian-linked group in Kyiv in spring 2022, discussed technical details of a plan to damage the pipelines, and initially appeared receptive before discouraging the operation.
- The magazine says the perpetrators later went ahead without U.S. approval using private Ukrainian funding, with a CIA representative in Kyiv purportedly urging the Ukrainian president’s office to halt the plan.
- A CIA spokesperson publicly rejected the reporting as completely and utterly false, calling the investigation inaccurate and unreliable and declining to specify which elements were contested.
- Der Spiegel also recounts that Dutch intelligence warned the CIA and German services in June 2022 about an attack plan, a tip Germany reportedly viewed skeptically because the suggested date had already passed.
- Context from German proceedings notes a December ruling indicating it is highly likely a foreign state ordered the explosions and confirms a Ukrainian suspect, Serhii Kuznetsov, remains in pre-trial detention in Germany.