A full three months before the Russian Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up, US authorities received information from a close ally that the Ukrainian military was planning a secret attack on the underwater gas pipeline network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military. "Washington Post".

Last year in June, the CIA received the details of the plan through intelligence from a European country, and the documents so far describe in the most detail Ukraine's involvement in the underwater attack in the Baltic Sea, which caused sharp reactions around the world, while Russia, Ukraine and the United States shifted responsibility for sabotage, says the article in the American newspaper.

The report was reportedly posted on the Discord platform by Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guard member arrested for leaking state secrets in the United States. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of his friends, the paper said.

The intelligence report is based on information obtained from a person in Ukraine. The Washington Post's sources could not immediately be confirmed, but according to multiple officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries as early as last June.

"The high level of detail - the number of operatives and the methods of the attack - shows that the Western allies had reason for almost a year to suspect that Kiev was responsible for the sabotage. That assessment was further confirmed in recent months, when German investigators uncovered evidence of a bombing with surprising similarities to what European intelligence knew Ukraine was planning," the article said.

Officials in several countries have confirmed that the intelligence summary posted on Discord accurately describes what European intelligence passed on to the CIA. The Washington Post says the outlet agreed not to reveal the European country from which the information came, as well as some aspects of the plan, at the request of government officials who said that revealing that information would compromise the sources and ongoing operations.

Ukraine, the White House and the CIA have not commented

European intelligence officials stress that the attack was not planned by independent, renegade saboteurs. All involved in the operation reportedly reported directly to the general Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's top military official, who was entrusted not only with leading the operation, but also with hiding it from the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenski, the intelligence report states, according to the Washington Post.

Keeping Zelensky out of the plans and his ignorance of the plan, according to the report, gave the Ukrainian president a convincing way to deny Ukraine's involvement in the attack. Kiev's admission of responsibility for the sabotage could have sparked public anger and threatened Western support for Ukraine, particularly in Germany. Before the war, the country got half of its natural gas needs from Russia, and Germany's biggest energy companies, along with French and Dutch partners, invested billions in Nord Stream, of which Russian state giant Gazprom owns 51 percent.

Ukraine has long opposed the project, arguing that Nord Stream would allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian gas pipelines, depriving Kiev of major transit profits.

By the way, in connection with the attack on "Severen Tek", in February it also attracted attention research of America's veteran independent journalist Seymour Hersh, which directly pointed to US President Joe Biden as the mastermind of the sabotage. The White House then called Hersh's report "completely false and a complete fabrication."