The Nord Stream Conspiracy by Bojan Pancevski: 5-star review
Jump to content
US Edition
UK Edition
Search Icon
Subscribe now
Log in
See all Entertainment
Sections
US Edition
UK Edition
Subscribe now
Log in
Login icon
Follow us on:
Facebook icon
Instagram icon
X icon
Snapchat icon
LinkedIn icon
YouTube icon
More from The Telegraph
Colin Freeman
Published<br>23 June 2026 10:00am BST
Related Topics
Nord Stream 2,
Ukraine,
Volodymyr Zelensky,
Vladimir Putin
Save
Comment speech bubble icon
Share article
Log in<br>or
Subscribe
Copy link
X Icon
Facebook Icon
WhatsApp Icon
Gift this article free
Gift article
Give full access to this article, free time. You have 15 articles left to gift, this month.
Log in<br>or
Subscribe
Copy link
X Icon
Facebook Icon
WhatsApp Icon
Add us as preferred source
The bomb blasts on the pipeline left 350,000 tons of methane bubbling to the Baltic’s surface
Credit: AFP
Colin Freeman
Published<br>23 June 2026 10:00am BST
In autumn 2022, a team of Ukrainian divers headed towards a yachting resort on Germany’s Baltic coast, primed for a top-secret undercover mission. Comprising four men and one woman, the group was equipped with scuba gear, explosives and possibly the daftest cover story in the history of espionage.<br>If stopped by police, the divers were ready to claim that they were making an aquatic-themed pornographic film. “This won’t be conspicuous at all in Germany or Sweden,” insisted their commander, a Soviet-era military-intelligence officer who had limited experience of Western Europe.<br>It seems unlikely that their story would have convinced the German authorities. At the same time, though, few would have believed the real mission, either: to dive to the bottom of the Baltic Sea and blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, the four 750-mile conduits designed to carry cheap Russian gas to Germany. For one thing, the pipelines lay 80m below the surface, twice as deep as even the best-trained special-forces divers normally go. And for another, to destroy Nord Stream would be the largest act of sabotage in modern history, destroying a $20bn (£15bn) project originally designed to cement Russian-German friendship.<br>Brazen as it was, the bomb plot went ahead, and was successful: two explosions wrecked three of the four pipelines beyond repair on September 26 that year. They have not resumed functioning since. Berlin’s friendship with Moscow had already soured in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The sabotage, coming seven months later, only cemented this, and helped ensure that Russia would never be able to blandish Germany again with offers of cheap Russian gas. Nonetheless, carrying the war into Europe’s coastal waters was still a colossal gamble. So how was the scheme dreamt up in the first place, and by whom?
A map showing the 750-mile Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, running from Russia to Germany
Credit: John Macdougall/Getty
All these questions and more are answered in The Nord Stream Conspiracy, a new book by investigative journalist Bojan Pancevski, which tells the remarkable inside story of the bomb plot, and the dogged German police investigation that ensued. Rather than merely relying on official sources, Pancevski gets plenty of his intelligence from the Ukrainian conspirators themselves – who tell him their story even as German prosecutors continue to hunt for them.<br>The strike, which left 350,000 tons of methane bubbling to the Baltic’s surface, sparked a vast geopolitical whodunnit. At the time, many in the West presumed that it was the work of the Kremlin, angry at EU energy sanctions and keen to show the bloc how vulnerable its power infrastructure was to sabotage. Meanwhile, plenty of others pointed a finger at the CIA. Successive Washington administrations had warned Germany that its reliance on cheap Russian gas left it beholden to Vladimir Putin’s regime, and a fortnight before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden, then the US president, had cryptically promised to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2 if Russia crossed that border.<br>Putin himself, though never slow to blame Kyiv, seemed to suggest that Ukraine wasn’t capable of this one, blaming instead an “Anglo-Saxon” alliance. Whoever the culprit was, it was assumed that they must have had a level of technical expertise only available to the world’s great powers.<br>Yet as Pancevski reveals, the world was once again underestimating Ukraine. The Nord Stream Conspiracy expands on reporting conducted in his capacity as Berlin correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, where he broke much of the original ground on this story. It’s also the fruit, however, of years of earlier reporting in Ukraine, where he appears to have met, and diligently cultivated as sources, two of the military commanders behind the Nord Stream attack, codename: “Operation Diameter”.<br>These two men are identified here only...