This operation broke that red line, and arguably it's what sets Russia off on going after Ukrainian critical infrastructure, gas plants, power stations, et cetera.

Well, that's certainly true.

I think the authors of this, uh, attack never contemplated that their, uh, endeavor will cross a red line, but it certainly did, and in ways that are, are quite terrifying, uh, for every, uh, industrial society because essentially these bits of mega infrastructure upon which all, we all rely on, such as pipelines, oil pipelines, you know, gas pipelines, power cables, internet cables, hugely important, satellites, uh, overland infrastructure, et cetera, is extremely vulnerable.

You know, in the aftermath of the attack on Nord Stream, I was talking to people whose job it is to protect infrastructure in Europe, and I was curious to see what, how they will adapt to this, and they [laughs] essentially, you know, they said, "Well, you can't really adapt to this because if someone uses a tiny little boat with a crew of six, there's nothing you can do literally to protect yourself from an attack like that, fro- from a kind of improvised small-scale attack with such lethal consequences." The pipeline was almost 1,000 miles long, right? There's no way you can patrol 1,000 miles.

There's no way you can have enough drones or sensors or what have you to protect a, a piece of infrastructure like that, and it hasn't been really tried before, you know, for the reasons you mentioned because once you start doing it, the other side will do it to you, so everyone's wary of kind of starting first.

And, and I think an attack like that hasn't happened since the Second World War.

Perhaps the worst lesson of all this, that it's actually very easy to do it.

But I don't think you'd rule that out, would you?

Can you just tell us briefly, for the benefit of those that might have forgotten what Nord Stream was, why it was controversial and what happened to it?

Sure.

Nord Stream was the biggest offshore pipeline system in the world.

It channeled natural gas from Russia directly to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

It consisted of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.

Each of them had two pipes, so four pipes in total, and they were almost 1,000 miles long from the Russian mainland to the German mainland.

It was highly controversial because the proponents of Nord Stream, which basically included consecutive German governments and most of all the former Chancellor Angela Merkel, would say this is a great thing because it allows us to import cheap Russian gas that we need to grow our economies in Western Europe, to fuel the industry, to heat homes, etc.

But, you know, what exactly did the Americans know and when did they know it? Can we pin that down?

But could you give us a summary of who planned it and how high was it signed off in the Ukrainian government, and how did it actually practically unfold?

The plan was conceived and executed by a elite unit of the Ukrainian Special Forces.

Its masterminds were senior officers who had honed their trade in the special services of Ukraine, notably first in the SBU, which is the biggest intelligence service of Ukraine, and then later in the Military Intelligence Service.

And then with the onset of the full scale invasion in February 2022, they actually became embedded in the armed forces.

They became soldiers, and they ended up serving in this elite unit in which one of them had a very senior commanding role.

What they did was literally on the first day of the full scale invasion, they put on their uniforms, they drove with their private vehicles to the armory of the military secret service.

They stocked up on weapons, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, anti-tank mines and things like that, and just went ahead to defend Kyiv in the Battle of Kyiv.

Can you just talk us through exactly how it was pieced together over that period?

And in those early hours, who was the finger of blame first pointed at? Very early on,

two camps formed.

One group of people without any evidence whatsoever were blaming Russia.

It's an interesting charge to make because the pipelines basically belonged, they were majority owned by Russia and they were an instrument of exporting Russian energy.

in exchange for countless billions of dollars that were flowing the other way from Europe to Moscow.

People who blame Russia said, well, look, Russia is a rogue state.

They've invaded Ukraine.

You identify Ukrainians, not so much the government, but almost a kind of ragtag Ukrainian rogue outfit who managed to pull off this attack.

And in those early hours, who was the finger of blame first pointed at?

Very early on, two camps formed.

One group of people without any evidence whatsoever were blaming Russia.

It's an interesting charge to make because the pipelines basically belonged, they were majority owned by Russia and they were an instrument of exporting Russian energy.

in exchange for countless billions of dollars that were flowing the other way from Europe to Moscow.

People who blame Russia said, well, look, Russia is a rogue state.

They've invaded Ukraine.

You identify Ukrainians, not so much the government, but almost a kind of ragtag Ukrainian rogue outfit who managed to pull off this attack.

book is like oh you know it's it's sort of a bunch of entertaining stuff uh to distract people from the prosaic reality that this was the americans who did it i mean what what what's your he actually because he actually ends the review by saying um believe what you like so will i uh what did you think of uh of this uh intervention

Well, I mean, would you take him seriously? I don't know.

I think he's got a nice

voice.

Yeah, he's got, you know, I mean, he had a great brother.

But look, what happened was he kind of slagged off the book on Twitter.

And someone sent that tweet to me or tagged me actually in a response.

And I said, well, why don't you just read the book before you slag it off? And then he actually did read the book.

Mm.

So it's, it's a rare skill set to have.

The motivation was very simple.

They wanted to put a dent into Putin's revenues that were feeding his war machine that was tearing their country apart.

And Nord Stream was a kind of an epitome of that, right? Um, even after full-scale invasion when the European Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, the, the bulk of them continued buying energy from the Russians because they, they just couldn't, couldn't emancipate themselves from, from the imports, uh, because it's just not that simple.

You can't overnight...

You know, at the time of the force, uh, full-scale invasion, when it started in t- 2022, the European Union was taking something like 50% of its gas imports from Russia.

Mm.

So it's kind of lunacy to think that Biden would go on television and say, "We'll blow up the pipelines." [chuckles] You know, why, why would he do that, right? And your conversation with Sy Hersh?

Well, Sy Hersh, yeah, that was a bit of a disappointment, I have to say.

You know, obviously he's a legendary figure and much respected and, and, you know, he's got great merit in, in, as a reporter.

But, uh, he seems to have one source.

Uh, he, he published this po- on Substack, he published a kind of a blog post relying on one source.

Uh, he made claims which are entirely outlandish.

You know, none of that is true.

Yeah, I, I just wanna say, just to, to wrap up here, tell us about the German police investigation, where that stands, who's in custody, who's not in custody, and where, how high up the chain can this go? If there were senior people in the Ukrainian government who signed off on this, had knowledge of it, uh, it would seem that they would be within the [laughs] uh, orbit of this, uh, investigation.

So where exactly does this idea of the Cossack spirit come to you? And why is it such an important thing to understand about how this operation was able to get off the ground and proceed?

Well, I think the Cossack spirit is kind of my word for that spirit of resilience, improvisation, sort of getting by despite the circumstances, which goes back a long way in those lands, right? Ukraine was always...

between the borderlines of huge empires and the nucleus of Ukrainian statehood goes back to these groups of people who wish to remain free of the influence and domination of these empires, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Tatar Empires, the Mongol Empires, you know, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, now completely forgotten, but a huge empire at the time.

It was the biggest state in Europe for a while.

And so these people, you know, these Cossacks at the Ukrainian end, they lived an independent life in a very fragmented way.

It was like bands of groups of people banding together to face a common enemy, but otherwise fiercely independent and in fact quarreling with each other in peace.

yeah warlords exactly sort of warlords the tribal lords etc and i think that fragmentation persists to this very day you know i don't want to sort of now plunge into stereotypes but you know the ukrainian state is a relatively young state in european terms you know it was it was set up shortly after the First World War for the first time, as it is now, or within similar boundaries, then it was obviously defeated and absorbed by the Soviet Empire.

We had this kind of complex situation where these investigators were kind of working under these circumstances, and I guess they could have given up, but they were really determined to get to the bottom of it.

yeah

warlords exactly sort of warlords the tribal lords etc and i think that fragmentation persists to this very day you know i don't want to sort of now plunge into stereotypes but you know the ukrainian state is a relatively young state in european terms you know it was it was set up shortly after the first world war for the first time as as it is now or in within similar boundaries then it was it was obviously uh defeated and absorbed by by the soviet empire and then when the soviet union collapsed uh ukraine became uh finally an independent nation uh in in its current borders minus the territory that was occupied and or or annexed by russia So after the fall of communism, Ukraine remained a kind of atomized polity, a fragmented polity in many ways.

Corruption was rife, a lot of problems facing society, and people had to learn to get by without reliance on the state.

This would sound a little bit alien to an American or a British person.

or a French or a German person even more, where the state is even much stronger than in America and an omnipresent, you know, you have welfare, you have this, you have that.

In Ukraine, it wasn't really like that.

There was kind of in the 90s, in the early 90s, there was a period like in many other places, including Russia, in the post-Soviet and post-communist realm, there was something of a... robber baron capitalism.

We had this kind of complex situation where these investigators were kind of working under these circumstances, and I guess they could have given up, but they were really determined to get to the bottom of it.

So where exactly does this idea of the Cossack spirit come to you? And why is it such an important thing to understand about how this operation was able to get off the ground and proceed?

Well, I think the Cossack spirit is kind of my word for that spirit of resilience, improvisation, sort of getting by despite the circumstances, which goes back a long way in those lands, right? Ukraine was always...

between the borderlines of huge empires and the nucleus of Ukrainian statehood goes back to these groups of people who wish to remain free of the influence and domination of these empires, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Tatar Empires, the Mongol Empires, you know, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, now completely forgotten, but a huge empire at the time.

It was the biggest state in Europe for a while.

And so these people, you know, these Cossacks at the Ukrainian end, they lived an independent life in a very fragmented way.

It was like bands of groups of people banding together to face a common enemy, but otherwise fiercely independent and in fact quarreling with each other in peace.

yeah warlords exactly sort of warlords the tribal lords etc and i think that fragmentation persists to this very day you know i don't want to sort of now plunge into stereotypes but you know the ukrainian state is a relatively young state in european terms you know it was it was set up shortly after the First World War for the first time, as it is now, or within similar boundaries, then it was obviously defeated and absorbed by the Soviet Empire.

We had this kind of complex situation where these investigators were kind of working under these circumstances, and I guess they could have given up, but they were really determined to get to the bottom of it.

Let's go after, you know, the people that are fighting for their lives to not live under a, you know, under putin i i just i'm really i'm flabbergasted by it

well i think the ukrainians will agree with everything you've just said and a lot of people in germany would probably agree as well in fact i know they would um there was a debate in the german parliament recently i think last month we're recording this in july so this was in june and the opposition the main opposition party which called alternative for germany afd quoted from my book in their uh push to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the nordstrom case uh they misquoted actually uh i mean they used actual quotes but in the wrong context um and uh The government refused their initiative and said there is a judiciary inquiry.

There's no need for a parliamentary inquiry.

Once the trial is over, we can think about it.

But now, why would we interfere with the law? And then the government quoted from my book as well, but they quoted rightly to make sort of the argument that you're making now.

So it was quite a fiery debate and some people just stood up and said, I remember one of the green legislators said North Stream was the worst thing we've done in foreign policy since the Second World War or since the Cold War.

It's a hugely momentous bad decision.

Well, were the consequences worth the action? Did Ukraine get what they want? Did it help them in the war in the short term or in the long term?

Uh, I mean, it's a really, again, a different model of how you do an intelligence operation compared to using a highly trained special forces or, you know, CIA or MI6 or, you know, special boat service or Navy SEAL team or some-something like that, isn't it?

Well, initially they did try to tap their own special services because remember, this operation was conceived within a elite unit of the special services, but quickly they found out that the combat divers in the special forces do not possess the skills to go that deep.

What they typically do is for the body of water, they put perhaps mines on ships and things like that.

But, you know, diving below a depth of forty meters requires, uh, breathing a special mix of gases because oxygen becomes toxic at that for the human body at that depth.

So you have to breathe in, uh, a mixture of nitrogen and helium, et cetera.

And it's, it's a very different skill set.

It requires a lot of training, and typically in the naval or the armed forces is the engineering units who, who have these skills.

Can you paint a, a, a portrait of some of these, some of these divers? In particular, I'm thinking of, uh, the woman you, you call Freya, who was-- who seems like a very, in some respects, an unusual candidate for this, for this kind of work.

Tell us about the, the damage.

Yeah.

Well, it's very interesting.

That, that is a little bit underreported.

So the, uh, the pipeline system consists of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.

Nord Stream 1 came online 2011.

Nord Stream 2 never came online.

Yeah.

That's the impression I got, and actually as the book went on, I thought, "No, actually you're being, you're far more neutral in this." But as you were kind of meeting these characters, was there sort of one group that you felt more sympathy towards, or did that kind of shift as you went along?

Well, look, I would never take an anti-German position.

I lived in Germany for almost eight years.

I, I, I know that country.

I'm kind of still embedded in it in many ways.

I...

It's, I mean, sympathy, you know, at a human level, once you get to know someone well, you establish a relationship, and it's common with a source, kind of source-journalist relationship where you know them quite well and you s- really try to understand them, or at least believe to understand them.

Did you receive any pushback or any obstruction coming from the Ukrainian side as you were investigating?

Mm-hmm.

Basically, 3D printers are pr- printing things.

They can print a glass.

They can print a, a glove.

They can even print a whole house.

And they, there are also 3D printers that, uh, print biological material, tissues, and the Russians are hoping even organs quite soon.

So the idea is you, you print an organ in the lab, and then you kind of implant it into a human being, like, say, lungs or liver or even the heart perhaps.

Whoa.

Mm-hmm.

Basically 3D printers are print- printing things.

They can print a glass.

They can print a, a glove.

They can even print a whole house.

And they, there are also 3D printers that, uh, print biological material, tissues, and the Russians are hoping even organs quite soon.

So the idea is you, you print an organ in the lab, and then you kind of implant it into a human being, like, say, lungs or liver or even the heart perhaps.

Is, is Putin gonna share? Will he share with Russia? Will he share it with the world?

Ich bin, ich bin kein Biochemiker, ähm, deswegen musst du das ganz einfach für mich erklären, bitte.

Ja, bin auch, ich auch nicht.

Also, äh, ich, ich kann's nicht besser erklären, [lacht] als was ich dir gesagt habe.

Ich muss annehmen, dass es so ist.

Also ich hab die ganze Studie nicht gelesen, aber was sie wollen halt, also dein Körper besteht aus Zellen.

Äh, jede einzelne Zelle wird älter und erneuert sich, äh, regelmäßig.

Also man muss, muss sich das vorstellen, in ein paar Monaten bist du ein neuer Mensch, weil jede einzelne Zelle wird sich voll-vollkommen erneuert haben in einer gewissen Zeitperiode.

Sechsundzwanzig Milliarden.

Yes.

Well, you know, he's an autocrat.

He runs a kind of top down system where he can drive funding wherever he wants, essentially.

And this This is a national, now what they call in Russia, they have several so-called national initiatives in healthcare.

And this one is the National Longevity Initiative, basically.

And it's, I think they've allocated or pledged to allocate 26, the equivalent of around $26 billion for basically expanding life and research into this field.

And it is something really that he's deeply, profoundly interested in.

And you talked to some of the saboteurs.

Are there signs that the pivot to defense is the solution to their economic problems?

Well, we're talking about less than a year now, you know.

Depends.

For some companies, it's, some companies were pioneers in it.

Others are, are kind of jumping on the bandwagon now.

So it's, it's early days, but individual companies show that there is a very positive effect.

I mean, we talked about Deutz.

Is this plan of Germany's kind of banking on a world with more conflict? So is that kind of the bet that Germany is making here?

He's been reporting on worried conversations between European officials.

They've been discreetly, sort of confidentially, to an extent secretly, discussing how to Europeanize NATO, how to use the existing command and control structures to make them more European, to kind of staff them with more European leaders, European officers, and how they can replace American assets and American troops should they be pulled out of Europe.

But it's gonna take more than discussions to fill any gaps left by a US retreat.

The United States is kind of an irreplaceable pillar at the moment of NATO.

The commander-in-chief of NATO, the supreme commander, is always an American, and there's no way the United States will surrender that post to anyone else.

America has the most important assets for modern warfare, intelligence, number one.

They've got satellite networks.

They've got anti-missile defenses.

Wie ist Selensky oder das Umfeld von Selensky-Jermak mit deiner Berichterstattung im Wall Street Journal und den Enthüllungen und dann auch das, was dann ja ins Buch kam, umgegangen?

Du meinst André Jermack, der ehemalige Kabinettschef von Zelensky, der Chef des Präsidialamtes? Ja, der, also ich...

Vor meinem ersten großen Artikel, also von dem Artikel, wo ich wirklich enthüllt habe, wie das ist.

Wer dahinter steckt.

Genau, der hat sich bei den Inhabern der Zeitung gemeldet, direkt.

Also nicht bei mir, sondern weil der ist ja gewöhnt, in der Ukraine macht man das so.

Er meldet sich nicht bei Paul Ronsheimer, er meldet sich bei Friedrich Springer oder bei Matthias Döpfner, weiß ich nicht.

du noch textest und wie geht es denen

Inwieweit war die CIA zu diesem Zeitpunkt? Wir sprechen ja, Planung war dann April, Mai 2022.

Aber die CIA als Agentur, als Organisation war gar nicht beteiligt an irgendetwas.

Es gab Agenten der CIA, die zu dem Zeitpunkt in Kiew gearbeitet haben.

Die haben eng zusammengearbeitet mit diesen Gruppen von Geheimdiensten, weil, wie gesagt, diese Geheimdienste haben schon eine gewisse Geschichte gehabt mit der CIA seit 2014, 2015.

Und ein Schritt zurück, also der Oberst, der Colonel und der General, einer der zwei Hauptakteuren, aber nicht nur die, sondern ein paar andere Leute von dieser Gruppe, also ein Typ, den ich Analyst nenne, die sind allesamt nach Amerika geflogen ein paar Mal.

Einige waren schon in Langley, das ist das Hauptquartier von CIA.

Die sind dort als angesehene Gäste empfangen worden.

erstmal wundert, warum plötzlich Holland? Weil

Bojan, why do European officials think Iran is involved in these attacks?

Well, basically, it's based on leads they've got in their investigations in several European countries, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and others.

They've also detected these announcements from an alleged group that claims all these attacks, and they've come to the conclusion that this group is linked to known Iranian social media propaganda channels.

In some cases, the attacks were filmed or even streamed, and they were immediately linked to these channels that are known to belong to government agencies, uh, from Iran.

So they basically believe the group doesn't exist as a group.

It's just a sort of a cover and online presence for what is being, they believe, organized by Tehran.

What do authorities say is Iran's motivation for these attacks?

Iran has been plotting or executing attacks on opponents, on critics, on dissidents, on Western journalists, writers, or politicians for many years now, so this is not something that's unknown to European law enforcement.

Also was versuchen die USA gerade militärisch, damit die Situation dort für sie und für die Welt besser wird?

Also erstmal diese Episode mit dem Öl hat es einigermaßen klar gemacht, dass die Präsidentschaft der Staaten doch nicht allzu sehr gut vorbereitet war für diese Eventualität, dass die Mullahs doch die Straße von Hormuz schließen.

Also dieses Hin und Her am gleichen Tag, also erstmal ruft Trump an und sagt, mach das nicht, dann zwei Stunden später ruft er wieder und sagt, mach das doch und die machen das doch.

Das sieht nicht nach so einer sehr geordneten Aktion aus, nach einem perfekten Plan.

Es sieht vielmehr nach Chaos und Improvisation.

Und in dem Moment habe ich wirklich kapiert, dass da irgendwie was schiefgelaufen ist mit der amerikanischen Planung.

Dann später in der Woche haben wir berichtet, das Journal, dass der oberste General der Vereinigten Staaten, den Trump vor dem vor der Operation gebrieft hat und ihm klipp und klar gesagt hat, die Mullahs werden wahrscheinlich die Straße von Hormuz schließen.

Also mit was befasst man sich dort gerade und was ist ein Way Out? Also glaubt man daran, dass man am Ende doch verhandeln kann und über welchen Zeitraum sprechen wir hier?