“The only two people involved in the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline were caught with the assistance of Donald Tusk’s security services because the Germans requested it,” Michał Rachoń commented on TV Republika. During the broadcaster’s program, he presented extensive excerpts from a book that describes in detail how Polish security services behaved toward their German counterparts during the operation to detain the Ukrainian suspects.
On the morning of September 26, 2022, the world learned that explosions had occurred in the Baltic Sea near the Danish island of Bornholm, destroying three of the four lines of the pipeline connecting Germany and Russia.
Today, thanks to Bojan Pancevski’s book Blowing Up Nord Stream: The Sabotage That Shook the World, new details have emerged about how the operation was carried out and who was responsible.
According to the book, the operation was carried out by the eight-member crew of the yacht Andromeda, consisting of one former soldier and seven Ukrainian divers. The operation, code-named “Diameter,” envisioned simultaneously destroying the Nord Stream infrastructure in the Baltic Sea and the South Stream infrastructure in the Black Sea. The second part of the mission failed because of the presence of Turkish and U.S. naval forces. The Black Sea has been heavily patrolled due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“These pages focus exclusively on the divers who participated in the attack on Nord Stream. The team assigned to the operation against TurkStream remains in the shadows, with one exception – a diver who took part in both operations. All the divers recruited for the Nord Stream mission were friends. Some of them were extremely close, forming the core of a group that had been diving and working together for more than ten years. Initially, they had ordinary civilian professions, and recreational diving was merely a hobby. Over time, some of them also introduced their life partners to the activity.”
The publication also states that, even before the sabotage took place, intelligence leaks passed through Dutch services to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was reportedly aware of the plans from the very beginning.
After the operation, German investigators launched their own inquiry. By analyzing vehicle camera footage, they identified cars that had traveled to the island of Rügen. At that stage, investigators already had grounds to identify some of the suspects as individuals residing in Poland. During Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Warsaw, the issue of at least one suspect remaining in Poland was reportedly discussed. It is now known that this referred to Volodymyr Zhuravlov. The second individual was identified only as “Captain.”
According to the book, both men were under constant surveillance in Poland by German intelligence services, which allegedly knew exactly where they were and how they moved around the country.
“You’d better get your man out,” a Polish intelligence officer reportedly said. “The Germans are getting closer, and we won’t be able to hold them off much longer.”
The book continues by stating that the matter soon became a Chefsache – a matter handled at the highest level of government.
“Then-President Andrzej Duda also picked up the phone and personally warned his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ‘It strengthens our security,’ Duda later told me, referring to the destruction of the pipelines. ‘It’s good that Nord Stream no longer exists.'”
Under German Supervision
According to Michał Rachoń, the publication suggests that Donald Tusk’s security services gave German authorities a free hand to operate in Poland.
“The description shows that even the Germans were surprised the Poles allowed it and handed over all the evidence, which was then transported to Potsdam,” Rachoń said.
German intelligence services also monitored another member of the Andromeda crew, who was later apprehended in Italy after traveling there from Kraków. When he checked in at the airport border crossing, German authorities were automatically notified.
“Germany activated a so-called ‘silent alert’ in the European Union’s Schengen Information System (SIS). When a person covered by such an alert appears at a border crossing and officers scan the passport, the alert is triggered. Border guards are then presented with four questions they must ask while recording the answers in the system. Once the procedure is completed, the traveler is allowed to continue. ‘Captain’ triggered the silent alert on August 16, 2025. It was an important day for his family: he, his wife, and their two young children were traveling to Kraków, where his nineteen-year-old son from a previous marriage was taking an entrance exam for a local university. The young man wanted to study business, management, and economics, but mathematics had never been his strongest subject, so he had prepared intensively. As soon as Polish Border Guard officers scanned ‘Captain’s’ passport, the German alert was activated. An invisible digital thread triggered an alarm at the German police headquarters in Potsdam. Their most elusive target had just appeared. The Border Guard detained the family for about an hour. Officers recorded their vehicle – a large SUV – its license plate number, and the family’s answers to the questions required under the German alert procedure: that they were traveling to Kraków for the son’s university entrance exam and did not intend to remain in the European Union for longer than two weeks. All of this information was automatically forwarded to the German police.”
Rachoń concluded:
“The only two people who carried out the destruction of the pipeline – described by Radosław Sikorski himself as ‘a modern-day Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’ – were caught with the assistance of Donald Tusk’s security services because that is what Germany wanted. Both of them were monitored with the participation of Polish security services at Germany’s request.”