Ukrainian spy HQ ablaze after Russian ‘assassination attempt’ on intelligence chief

0:00The Telegraph I'm Frances Dernley and this is Ukraine, the latest. Today as Russia has almost ceased the bombardment of Ukraine continues, we report breaking news of a drone striking the headquarters of Ukraine's security service for the first time. In the end, we hear of yet another assassination of a Russian general, widely believed to have

1:03ordered one of the war's most notorious airstrikes. Then we turn to rumors that US envoys Wicoff and Kushner could visit Ukraine in the coming days. Perhaps Dom shamed them into action. Before returning to the explosions that shook the world, amid the destruction of Moscow's most powerful geopolitical instrument in Europe, what do we know now that we didn't know then about Nord Stream? bravery takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory The Russians is not one piece. First we will share our help with Ukraine, our freedom and our European values. If I'm president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours. We can't let the Russians win the Russian. Nobody is going to break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians.

2:04It's Friday, the 4th of September, 4 years and 192 days since the fall scale invasion began. And today I'm joined by Telegraph journalist Sophia Sullivan here in the studio and later I speak to author and journalist Boyan Panchevsky. But first the latest updates for you. We start with news just in. A Russian drone has struck the headquarters of the SBU Ukraine Security Service, opposite Sons of Firs Cathedral in Central Kiev, injuring at least 9 people. This was a daylight raid in a very busy neighborhood of the capital near many Western embassies. Sullivan Zelentsky has just said that the drone was aimed directly at the office of the head of the Security Service in that building, adding that he instructed the Security Service to deliver an appropriate tangible response and where possible one that mirrors this strike to the Russians once everything is ready. But he was not there the security chief at the time of the attack we understand.

3:06A fire broke out in the building following the strike. Security services are currently working at the scene and dealing with the aftermath. For a minister, Sybia called it a major escalation that demands resolute responses. Laying bare, he said, Moscow's true rejection of diplomacy. We call on international partners he added to unequivocally condemn these actions and step up pressure on the Putin regime. We will have more for you on this story on the Telegraph website as it evolves and of course on the podcast next week. The last blast was a continuation of Russia's relentless attacks against Ukraine, which was also bombarded throughout last night, causing more debilitatingly long air alerts. At least five were killed and 66 injured, with drones reaching as far as the Western regions of Hemelnitsky and Venitsia. President Zelentsky said damage was recorded in 13 or blasts overnight after 163 drones were fired around half of them, jet-powered.

4:07The enemy did not go on vacation, President Zelentsky said. The Russians have found a new escalation and have no plans to slow it down. We need faster European production of defensive systems, primarily air defense, both anti-missile and anti-drone. The largest number of injuries were reported in a deserter blast, where at least 17 people including three children were hurt. 20 apartments on the 10th through 17th floors of a residential building and 12 nearby cars were damaged according to the governor there. A deserter, as we've been reporting for several weeks now, has been especially targeted recently, as Moscow seeks to once again strangle the grain corridors over land and sea. To just give you a snapshot of the severity of the situation and how the modern systems that we recorded the last time we were in the city aren't enough on their own, I'd point again to the footage of Ukrainian gunners, with nothing but an assault rifle in an open cockpit, hunting Russian drones from Soviet era Yak-52 propeller planes donated by a Dutch

5:08NGO. It is extraordinary footage. In Kiev, Oblast, a man suffered trappinal wounds in one district and was hospitalized as warehouses and administrative building a shop and kiosks were damaged. 13 were injured overall there, including a 12-year-old girl. For understandable political reasons, the government has been keen to draw attention to the fact that a Coca-Cola plant was hit. Coca-Cola has now apparently become such an enemy to them that they are burning it with their shaheads. A clear Russian signal to America, the Russians cannot possibly be unaware that this is an American company. The deadliest attacks were reported in the NEPROPETROC region, where 4 people were killed and 13 injured, as Russian forces struck six districts with drones, artillery and a glide bomb. In Hezon, Oblast, one person was killed and 16 injured. Footage there, circulating on social media, shows yet another mini-buss that was apparently deliberately targeted by a manually controlled FPV, with one person reportedly killed by that.

6:10Other impacted Oblast were Sumi, Deneck, Harkiv and Zaparizia. So we are talking about every corner of the country, if one includes those western regions I mentioned earlier. With very little movement on the front lines, let's turn next to the Ukrainian attacks against Russian territory. The Black Sea port of Sotchi was struck once again overnight, with a video released by the Navy, showing the fiery aftermath of a drone hitting a ship, supporting Russia's oil and gas operations. Telegram channels of local people also shed footage of a fire at an oil depot there, plus of a reported explosion around a pancier air defense apparatus at the port. Considerably further away, Ukrainian drones also reportedly struck a military industrial facility in Stalita, about 1,300 kilometers from the border, according to local reports and footage circulating on social media. According to the Kiev Independent, that facility produces aviation fuel and other materials used by Russia's defense industry. We've reported incidents of it being hit previously.

7:10But by far, the most commented upon attack of the past day was much smaller in scale. We were getting whispers of this when we recorded yesterday's episode and Don mentioned it, but we had no details. Now it seems we know more, and apparent assassination on a Russian military commander recently linked by Ukraine's security service to a deadly strike on a children's hospital in 2024. Major General Nikolai Vorpakovich was shot by an unknown person near Engels in Russia's Saratov Oblast yesterday morning, with the attacker shooting the commander twice for escaping on a motorbike. The SPU had just handed down a notice of suspicion on him in absentia, for his involvement in the strike on Okhmadeed Children's Hospital in Kiev on July 8, 2024. It killed two adults and injured at least 34 people, including nine children. More than 600 patients were in the hospital during the attack, as we reported in great detail at the time. So, yet another example of operatives apparently pursuing those believed to be responsible

8:13for some of the most egregious attacks in the war, not only to carry out some form of justice, but also to instill fear, and make other generals think twice about the orders they give against Ukraine. Lastly, before we turn to the diplomatic realm with Sophie, Zelensky's threat against Russian air traffic continues to play out, as airports entered a third consecutive night of disruption this morning, as another wave of drones approached Moscow amid the cancellations and delays already in place. In an interesting segment, CNN interviewed Czech President Petra Pavel, asking him to comment on Zelensky's threat. They start by playing Putin's speech, where he described the move by Zelensky as terrorism before going to Pavel for his response. Listen, I haven't heard these statements, but if it was set out loud, it would border state terrorism. Also, I draw your attention to the fact that they ask us to resume talks with them, to meet them in person, while there can be no talks with terrorists.

9:17You can see why Dom likes him, can't you? Now, if you want to hear more from Pavel, we'll link again in the episode description to our exclusive interview with him at NATO a few months ago, which I think I'm right, and saying he recorded Sophie. I did, and I'm a huge fan of him, he was very nice. Oh, well see. Yeah, he was very nice. I thought he was a very nice, warm person. Yeah, he does seem like a cheery chap. Well, let's go to the diplomatic realm, then. And wouldn't necessarily describe these two as cheery chaps, but to tell us about the latest on Christian and Wicov. Yes, well, it looks like perhaps they took the hint from Dom, but last night it looked like they were headed to Ukraine. President Zelensky had this to say in his lightly address. I just held a meeting with the same engaged in negotiations with the emboors of the US president. We are in communication with them virtually 24-7, and are now preparing for meetings. Tentative dates have been set. We expect to see the US president's emboys here in Kiev. They confirmed they will have a meeting in Moscow and another one in Kiev. We expect the latter to take place in the coming days.

10:19Now as we've said many times, this plan trip would be a huge deal. It would be the first time they visited Ukraine, despite going to Moscow many times. But the Kiev independent has just exclusively reported that the visit, which was scheduled for the fifth and sixth of September, might now have been thrown into doubt with Wicov starting to get scared. Right. So the source said that Russians don't want them to come here to Kiev, and Wicov is always sensitive to Russian sentiment. And they added that they're being told that it's dangerous. Well, that is certainly true, but I think that the real motivation for Moscow there is obvious they don't want them there, do they? No. So Wicov is apparently uncomfortable traveling to Kiev by train. Obviously the airspace is still closed, so plain would just be impossible. But a person to close to the Trump administration told the Kiev independent that the visit was planned, but said it might still be cancelled. So I'm not holding my breath. So I don't know if Tom is going to be willing to put another bet down and another hat to

11:20be consumed, but anyway, an interesting story. Very interesting. And it actually comes as Trump said on Thursday that he's going to ask European nations to pay back the United States for the military aid that it's given for the conflict in Ukraine. He said on a social media post, speaking about munitions, because obviously there's this issue with munitions with how much has been used in Iran. He said we're taking them for ourselves, the USA, rather than selling them to others. He also blamed Biden again for giving too much to Ukraine. He said he gave far more munitions away to Ukraine at no cost to them whatsoever than we've used in Iran. So clearly trying to justify the amount of munitions which are being spent in the Middle East. He also said that hundreds and billions of dollars was given to Ukraine and NATO free of charge, which Europe would have paid for if they were only asked. We will be asking for that money, though somewhat belatedly. Yeah, he's a tendency to parrot this line very often, doesn't he? But it is interesting, given the reporting we've been doing now for several months, and

12:21to the delays of weapons that have already been paid for through the perl initiative not getting to where they belong to. And this is a confirmation that they're going elsewhere. They're being prioritized in the Middle East. Exactly. So next story on some more fallout from the Leipzig drone attack. It continues. The British foreign office have now summoned a top Russian diplomat over the expected drone attack after Germany blamed Russia. So a spokesperson for Downing Street has said that the UK stands in full solidarity with Germany following Russia's egregious and reckless attack on Leipzig airport. Now the Russian embassy in London has said that the summons was part of a, quote, coordinated provocation. They also said these unsubstantiated and absurd accusations constructed in a surprisingly British style, not sure what they mean there, were categorically rejected that they said on telegram spokesperson for the embassy. So they also warned that any escalation by Britain or Europe would draw a quote, adequate

13:21and calibrated response from Moscow. So further fallout on the Leipzig attack after Germany announced that they'd be closing the Russia House in Berlin. Russia has responded by saying that it will be closing all branches of Germany's Gertr Hauss in Russia. There's three branches. But you've been speaking to James Rosswell a lot about this in Berlin. Yeah, this was one of the themes that he and I touched on. There were concerns. Generally, this was a subject of conversation in Germany as to whether it will be a bad thing or not for the Gertr Hauss, the Gertr institutes to shut in Russia. This culture really that one often sees among the German elite to feel that the door has to be kept open to Russia diplomatically. And this is one of the ways in which there can be this cultural exchange taking place as well as being symbolic that not all the doors are closed. But of course, one can obviously understand many saying why on earth is Russia House? It allowed to be in the centre of Berlin peddling Russian propaganda being used potentially even as was reported over there as a front for the Russian intelligence services. It was considered madness, particularly following the kind of instance that we've just

14:23heard with Leipzig over the last few weeks. And so, as you say, Germany made that maneuver and Moscow has retaliated in the way that used to be very commonplace in the Cold War. One does one, the other does it the same. Exactly. Well, Sergey Lavrov has absolutely insisted that the door is closed saying that it's an end of German culture presence in Russia. Interesting. Now, interestingly, the Marx government is ramping up the support for Ukraine having just announced another aid package, 250 million euros, to repair Ukrainian energy infrastructure ahead of the winter. Now, obviously, we have this really pivotal Saxony and Holtz state election this weekend. Polls are currently predicting that the hard-right party, the AFD, will take it, but will have more updates on that on Monday. Yes, James is going to come on and he's just released a documentary on it, which we'll be clipping from as well, really fascinating election that with major consequences for the defence, as we spoke about with James very recently, on last Thursday's episode, I think. Yeah, one slight more strange turn from the incident. Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Roman Radev, has suggested that the alleged attack was provoked

15:26by the West's military support for Ukraine. So he said, what can we expect when we attack another country with our long-wrained weapons? Will the country stand by or will it respond? So Radev asked this to the Bulgarian parliament, according to the Bulgarian press. He's also repeatedly characterised Europe's sending long-wrained weapons to Ukraine as a reckless act and accused Western countries of war-mongering. I mean, concerning given that Bulgaria is a NATO and EU member, and we've seen obstacles before from when you have one state who's willing to cause trouble, like Hungary, it can cause issues further down the line, although I think Bulgaria is not quite as bad. Not quite, but it is, yeah, it's looking a bit fishy. He also said Europe must finally start calculating the risk and sit down at the negotiating table as soon as possible, because the war is expanding its spatial scope and the risk is growing with each passing day. So we'll see what happens there. Now an interesting story from Estonia, where the defence minister has resigned, over a

16:2670 million euro scandal involving EU-funded artillery for Ukraine. So he announced his resignation after it was discovered this week that the Estonian government had awarded a 70 million dollar contract to supply weapons to Ukraine to a company who had never made weapons before. So the chosen supplier was an Indian-run Italy-based company called Datacel-X-R-L. In 2024, Estonia commissioned them to make munitions for Ukraine's frontline, but the company reportedly delayed delivery. When it did eventually deliver the emissions, they weren't suitable to go to the frontline, they were incomplete or faulty, and none of them ever made it to Ukraine. So Estonia's prosecutor's office has said there is actually opening a criminal investigation about the scandal, and Estonia is taking the case of the European Court of Arbitration in Strasbourg. Now Phevka, the defence minister who resigned, has denied knowledge of the issues with the deal, but he's taking responsibility.

17:28Now just as a reminder, Estonia has recently significantly increased their military spending over fears that they could be the first line of defence for NATO if Russia attacked. They've got this long 183 mile border with Russia, so this issue with weapons procurement is a real embarrassment for them. Yeah, well, if you're listening in Estonia, I imagine this is a very, very big story there. So do please write in with further details on how this is being received in a country that's of course really pivotal at the moment on the flank that's most considered of concern if there were to be a probing of Article 5. Now a quick update on China, I know you're talking about them yesterday. The Chinese news service has reported via Reuters that China will be sending troops to Russia for training. Now the Chinese defence ministry seems to be saying that there's mostly for mind detection, area clearance, removing improvised explosive devices, but it's also said it will help promote experience, sharing and capacity building in mind action among participating countries. So China and Russia and enhance regional peace and stability.

18:31Support comes from wise, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. Your life is global, your money should be too. Some providers promise no fees on overseas transfers, don't be fooled. Extra costs often hide in bloated exchange rates. You can send spend and receive money in over 40 currencies. Count on the exchange rates that you'd usually see on Google. That's how millions save billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise, visit wise.com, season C's apply. Let's turn to our interview segment now. An interesting one this, the Bailey Gifford Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for

19:31literary nonfiction in the world, has just released its long list this week. On it is the Nord Stream conspiracy by author and journalist Boyan Panchevsky. It's an investigation that includes exclusive access to key players involved in what has been called the greatest act of sabotage in modern history. The destruction of Moscow's most powerful geopolitical instrument in Europe in September 2022. The Nord Stream pipeline. The culprits have never been officially identified. First, the Kremlin was blamed, then the CIA, and now Kiev is widely believed to have been ultimately responsible. I spoke to Boyan to find out what he uncovered. He began by explaining what Nord Stream actually is, or was, and why it mattered. Nord Stream was, or is, the largest ever built offshore pipeline system in the world. It channeled natural gas from Russia directly to Western Europe to the shores of Germany. It connected Russia and Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

20:31It took almost 20 years to plan and construct the project. It consists of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1, which is a bit older. It came online 2011 in Nord Stream 2, which was completed in October 2021, but never came online because of the full scale invasion. The project cost around $20 billion to build. It was one of these mega-infrastructure projects, one of the main arteries for imports of energy into Western Europe, into the European Union. It was highly controversial right from the onset. It was announced in 2005, and already then the Foreign Minister of Poland, Radetsikorski, who is now interestingly again foreign minister of Poland after 20 years. He compared it to the Molotov-Ribentrop Nazi Soviet pact to carve up Eastern Europe and Poland in particular. So it was highly contended. It was controversial. The British politician didn't like it.

21:32The polls didn't like it. It is in Europe, he is in the United States. The Ukrainian has hated it. Every single American administration since that of George W. Bush opposed it. Donald Trump imposed sanctions on parts of it during his first term, and he keeps talking about those sanctions. The people who were proponents, including most of all, first of all, Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor, and she would always say this is a pure commercial project. There's nothing to do with geopolitics. It did fuel the then booming German economy with cheap gas. It did deliver cheap gas to the rest of Western Europe as well. And it did enable Vladimir Putin, a pretty significant leverage over the recipients of his energy exports. So much so that when the full-scale invasion started, the European Union, I think around half of the natural gas imports, the European Union was taking, came from Russia and something around 55 percent that was the figure in Germany. So when the tank started rolling, the European Union wasn't able to just kind of stop buying

22:36gas and oil from Russia. It was rather a very, very gradual process, and billions and billions and billions of euros went into the Russian war machine despite all the other sanctions. So that's the backstory to Nord Stream. Now I remember when the full-scale invasion happened, of course we got very quickly wrapped up in this outcome that you've just described, which is Russian energy being absolutely critical to Europe. And so Europe not being able to immediately perhaps do sanctions as drastically as some of the European leaders wanted to as a consequence of Nord Stream. And then all of a sudden it blows up. And this was a huge story, and I remember at the time that we were being told by every source, and so we were compelled to report it this way that Russia had done this. Now over the years, as people all know from the podcasts, there have been, and in part because of your investigative work as a journalist, we've got to the truth. But can you take us back to that time and what happened next?

23:38Yes, well, the pipelines exploded on the 26th of September 2022. That was the year of the start of the full-scale invasion. And it was an enormous geopolitical event. It was also the actual explosions were extremely violent. They released the biggest ever recorded emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere caused by humans. But more than anything, it triggered this kind of frenzy in the public and in law enforcement and the secret services of trying to establish who actually did it and who denied this access to Russian natural gas for Germany and Western Europe. Because at the time of the explosions Putin had turned off the tap, although the pipelines were pressurized and full of gas, he wasn't exporting the gas to Germany. On it falls pretense that there are technical issues, etc. In fact, it was brinkmanship. He was trying to put pressure on the German government not to support Ukraine in their war of defense against Russian aggression.

24:38So it was a huge mystery. It was a huge who'd done it. And the truth was kind of embarrassing for each party involved because the Germans were not keen on knowing that Ukrainians blew it up because it would have challenged the government policy which stands to this day that supporting Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression is in their national interest. So it was a big deal and I think very quickly two theories crystallized. People who supported Ukraine seemingly wanted to believe that it was Russia and the argument was pretty simple. Russia is an aggressor. Russia invaded Georgia, invaded Ukraine, keeps invading countries. Russia is responsible for many kind of sabotage operations on European soil. And so Russia was an obvious culprit and it was kind of easy for people who supported Ukraine to accept that it would have been Russia. Although there was literally no sense in that argument because as we discussed, North Stream was perhaps the flagship geopolitical project of Vladimir Putin in Europe.

25:40It took him around 20 years to conceive, agree and build this $20 billion. So what would be the rationale behind destroying it? In fact, even now the Russians are pushing to repair, restore and restart North Stream. It's very, very relevant for this whole story because the Russians have never stopped wanting to restart the trade. The US officials, British officials, German officials, especially from the kind of special services, were briefing in this kind of very awkward way. It was hints and innuendos. It was never like, here's the evidence. We've intercepted this or that. We have human intelligence. It was always like, we don't actually have evidence, but who else would have done it and so on and so forth. And then of course, a bunch of experts who are supportive of Ukraine, you know, think and think and the like, start kind of jumping on that bandwagon and start explaining, they rationalize it in weird ways. One rational argument was Putin stopped the gas flow. So he would have had to pay penalties under international agreements and to avoid paying

26:43those penalties, they should blow the pipeline up, etc. The other camp was the CIA camp. This is mainly people who actually do not support Ukraine and perhaps have sympathy with Russia. They call less around the idea that it was the CIA, the kind of the the eternal bogeyman who we know what the CIA did in the 70s and the 80s and the Karagua Cuba. They've blown up infrastructure before. It's not a new territory for them. So essentially people said, oh, it must have been them. Exhibit A was a statement issued by Joe Biden, the then president of the United States during a press conference, a kind of a month before the full-scale invasion was launched. He said if Putin invades, we will end the pipeline. We will have ways of ending it. Of course, what he meant was sanctions. And in fact, there are sanctions on the pipelines now and these sanctions are literally rendering the pipelines dead. Nobody can buy gas from them. And even if Putin will repair them somehow magically and restore them, he wouldn't be able to sell gas because no company in Europe will engage in such a trade while there are

27:47sanctions. So there was no need for the CIA to go full on rogue and blow up things up where they could do it by a stroke of a pen. And then of course came that blog post by Seymour Hirsch, the kind of celebrated American journalist. And he wrote his blog post based, I think, on one source, essentially saying it was American combat divers who laid the mines in cooperation with Norway, which is also quite a bizarre proposition for anyone who is dealt with Norwegian officials and knows Norway as a polity. And involved the kind of spy planes, a high tech equipment and all sorts of things. And he built his narrative. A lot of the points he made in the blog post were later shown to be wrong by open source intelligence analysts who found that the ship he named wasn't actually there. It was somewhere else and things like that. But fundamentally, no one ever matched that story and that should have been a red flag for anyone wanting to believe in it because in my 20 years of journalists, I've never encountered a scoop that was never, ever matched again in almost three years now.

28:50That's quite extraordinary and it's not really plausible. But more than that, I spoke to the people who did it and who actually laid the mines with their own hands onto the pipeline and they told me they were quite happy doing this theory started proliferating because they thought they would deflect attention from us and the Russians won't be sending hitmen to take us out. And indeed, Vladimir Putin himself quoted Seymour Hirsch, he said, the great American journalist found out the truth. It was the Anglo-Saxons, he's favorite term. He means the CIA and Britain. So that was a state of play. There were three investigations Denmark, Sweden, Germany investigated Denmark and Sweden shut down the investigations, sealed the evidence, classified the whole thing and never said anything about what they found. Germany is still investigating and I think eventually the truth will come out in Germany because they recently indicted a Ukrainian suspect who they say was the coordinator of the sabotage team and at the time of the attack he was a serving officer in a special forces unit of the Ukrainian army with a rank of captain and they're making the argument that this

29:55was a Ukrainian operation. And I think a lot of the stuff that I've reported on exclusively in my book will come out during the trial, which I think will take place in the autumn. And this will be the very first kind of official revelation disclosure if you will of the evidence they've gathered in the past four years of investing. And so I don't really blame people who believe that it was the CIA or there was Russia because it's only natural to want to explain a event like that. And when there is no real official information you have to choose what you believe in. And it always tends to be that it's a big organization or a national government. But as you say in the piece, I mean, this isn't how history works. And to quote the book, the conspiracy was plotted by some of the sharpest operatives in Ukraine, yet it was uncovered by a simple German traffic camera and commercial facial recognition software. And then you go on and say the story lacks the comforting moral clarity that typically defines tales of cops and criminals. Do Ukrainians say they attack the legitimate military target in a war of survival?

30:58The Germans say it differently. They're prosecuting an attack against critical infrastructure that endangered their country's constitutional order. To them, the letter of the law is an end in itself. So I mean, people have to read the book to know all of the details of this extraordinary sabotage act. 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 SPU, 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.

31:59They 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 that put on their uniforms, they drove with their private vehicles to the armory of the military secret service. They'd stocked up on weapons, anti-tank weapons, machine guns, anti-tank mines and things like that and just went ahead to defend Kiev in the Battle of Kiev. And as soon as Kiev was defended, they started drafting plans for economic warfare because that was their specialty. They were not ordinary soldiers. There were spooks, basically counterintelligence operatives who had been engaged in fighting Russia since 2014. They were fighting Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine and sometimes in Russia proper itself with clandestine missions infiltrating Russian military intelligence structures, etc.

33:00So they drafted a list of potential targets within Russia or around Russia that served Russia's national interest in that they facilitated the export of oil and gas. The targets included the gas fields in Siberia, the Kerch bridge which connects the occupied Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland and Nord Stream the pipeline system. What they did is they rented a boat, a sailing yacht which set sail from German shores from the island of Rugen and the Baltic. Initially the boat had a crew of six three military officers belonging to that special forces unit I mentioned. One was a skipper, a world-class skipper who prior to volunteering to fight in the war was a professional skipper. Then it was an explosives expert on board who handled the explosives and there was one commander of the whole crew and the other three crew members were civilians.

34:01In fact they were deep sea divers, so what is known as technical divers people who can go down to a depth of over 100 meters and operate at the bottom of the ocean. The reason why they used civilians was they couldn't find combat divers with that particular skill set within the Ukrainian armed forces. It's a very rare skill set. The whole thing cost around $250,000 which is extremely cheap, bearing in mind the pipeline cost 20 billion and it was extremely important in geopolitical and energy trade terms. In a sense they wrote a new chapter in the clandestine warfare. No one before them really internalized how easy it is to do something like that. The Ukrainians with their backs against the war are proving much more resourceful and innovative in ways that are not entirely expected in that world. I think that's part of the reason why Vladimir Putin is simply unable to intellectually comprehend what actually happened. He's keen on blaming the CIA because that's a worthy opponent since the days he was at

35:03the KGB in the Soviet Union. Whereas I've established in my research that intelligence officers in the Russian system actually knew it was Ukraine. They gathered enough evidence but in an orthocratic militarized dictatorship the Russian Federation has become intelligence like that doesn't really flow upward or if it does it gets filtered then doesn't really reach the right people. You talked about some of the political barriers, shall we say, to the truth coming out about this over the years. But as I alluded to earlier on that eventually it was pieced together in a pretty convincing way. It was a simple German traffic camera that did so. Can you just talk us through exactly how it was pieced together over that period? So what happened was very early on the operation was leaked by the military intelligence service of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. I don't know if your audiences are familiar with that relatively small outfit but it's very well known in the intelligence community.

36:03They have great capacity especially in that part of the world, Ukraine and Russia. And they informed the CIA about a plan to destroy the pipelines by Ukrainian special services officers. Some of them were named in this kind of confidential memo. The CIA as soon as they found out sprang into action and news reached the then head of the CIA will in Burns who I think personally ordered that the Germans should be warned about what was happening and that the Ukrainians should be told to cease and desist. But what happened eventually was that the Ukrainians postponed the operation for a couple of months and just did it anyway. Which is what typically they do when the Americans are trying to ban them from doing something. They are fighting their own war and they're making their own decisions. So when the investigations started actually there were intelligence officials and political officials who knew that they were leads pointing in the direction of Ukraine.

37:03However because of the complicated way intelligence is shared the detectives in Germany were not privy to that information for quite a long time. So they had to start from scratch. They were facing a probium from their friends and partners in Europe and within NATO nobody was really too enthusiastic of us helping their investigation because now I compare the pipeline to the murder on the Orient Express. There was a victim, everyone hated the victim and everyone eventually became the potential suspect. Nobody except the Germans really was crying for the pipelines blowing up. So after many exerves, mishaps and obstructions the chief investigator ordered his people when they identified the yacht initially and then they identified the port from which the yacht set sail but that was all they had. They didn't have any faces and names and fingerprints and DNA samples. The crew of the boat were like ghosts to them. At one point he realized there were only two roads leading up to that port.

38:07So he sent his people to go through all the speed cameras in the entire region. They went through thousands of images and they found a car with Ukrainian license plates. They ran that picture to commercially available facial recognition software which they downloaded from the internet and that software quickly found that this person was a well-known, well-regarded diving instructor from Ukraine. And there was obviously a big red flag and then they started pursuing that lead and they established his whole social network. And so one thing led to another in the end that was perhaps the crucial bit of evidence that foiled the entire Nord Stream conspiracy. Later on they did similar shoe letter detective work in the actual port where this yacht set sail. It's a small quaint little port town. It has a couple of hotels and people go there on holiday. So they went to the holiday makers and they questioned all of them. None of them could remember anything obviously. But then they spent weeks and weeks talking to them and going through their footage until

39:11they found a video on an iPhone, I think, of the actual yacht. And then they found a snapshot of a family taking a picture in the port and there you could see a Ukrainian car. And so they pieced together as meticulously the puzzle. It was quite a sort of classic detective work that actually achieved their breakthrough. And then of course they used many more sophisticated means of electronic surveillance, etc. as I described in my book until they issued seven arrest warrants for all the people who they say were on the boat. And one of the suspects has been apprehended last year. He was arrested in Italy while on holiday with his family. He was since transferred to Germany. He will be tried in Hamburg in a kind of landmark trial. And he's been already been charged and died it. And the indictment essentially says that he was participating in this plot on behalf of Ukraine. And at the end, I have to ask, we have this trial upcoming. Do you think that people will be found guilty of this and therefore spend time in prison

40:15because of this operation? Or do you think that there will be because of the fact this is a war on European soil? Germany, as you say, is the biggest supporter of Ukraine that there will, in a sense, be some sort of deal that's done that means that these individuals are sent back to Ukraine. And what's your instinct on that? It's very complex and complicated issue, legally, morally, ethically. In the research from my book, I had access to the people who carried out the operation and to the detectives who were hunting them. And I was talking to them in parallel and understood their motivations. And they're quite similar. The Ukrainians were motivated by patriotism. It's plain and simple. They wanted to strike back and put a dent into Putin's revenues that were feeding his war machine. And the Germans were motivated by a sense of duty. These are cops. These are investigators. These are prosecutors, people who volunteered to serve their country, their constitutional order. They're very legalistic. They believe in the Constitution, the rule of law. They want to solve the case. The previous government was not all that keen on their own police forces finding out that

41:17Ukraine might have been behind this because that's always put them in an awkward political position. The prison government is even less keen because now they've got the pro-Russian opposition alternative for Germany, which is ostensibly a hard nationalist party, but they reinvented themselves as a pro-Putin pro-Russia party, which is relatively strange and extraordinary. Nonetheless, they are seizing on this case, even on my book. They've misquoted my book in a parliamentary debate. And then they want to stop the aid to Ukraine. So the stakes are quite high. The Ukrainians always ask me, why doesn't the chancellor just stop the investigation? He can. Constitutional. He has the power to do so. But in Germany, it's not going to happen. It's a rule of law country, it's a liberal democracy, and police are independent, prosecutors are independent, politicians are not going to meddle. And judges are also independent. So the court case in Hamburg will take place in the Augustan's hands-eatic high court of Hamburg. It's a very distinguished, very historic institution.

42:19So I don't think there will be politics or any favors to anyone. It will be a battle in a court of law. Nothing like this has ever reached the court. The defense claims this was a military operation and therefore the suspect enjoys immunity, combatant immunity cannot be put in trial in a court of civilian law. The prosecutors turned that defense on its head and they're saying fine, we will accept that. However, we will not accept this as a legitimate target because this pipeline was supplying us. It was away from the front line and crucially to the Germans, the people who did it were not wearing uniforms. Therefore, they would not have been identified as combatants. And so they are saying fine. And because you did this, it's war crimes. So he's now charged with war crimes. It's a very severe and serious charge. And it has kind of outraged some people in Germany who are saying, well, look, these people are fighting for survival. We're the first person in this war, which is riddled with war crimes and mainly coming from the Russian aggressors.

43:21We have seen what happens in Ukraine and that there are obvious suspected war crimes taking place. And the first person to stand trial for war crimes will be a Ukrainian officer, which is kind of unusual. Well, boy, and thank you very much for your time. We'll of course link in the show notes to those who are interested in reading your book, which I heartily recommend. And we'll be following this case as well on Ukraine the latest. But thank you very much for your time today. Thank you ever so much. Now I should just add that as you reported a few days ago, Sophie, there's been since a twist in the tail here. Last month in Croatia, the actors Sean Penn and Adrian Brody were spotted making a new film into the Nord Stream operation. There, allegedly acting as an advisor, one of the chief suspects whose twice eluded the German authorities was arrested under a European arrest warrant. So this story is still far from over. Thank you very much for joining us this week. We'll be back same time, same place next week.

44:21Goodbye for now.

46:17See you next time.