EXCLUSIVE: Former Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Can Be Prosecuted for Role in Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage
Valeriy Zaluzhniy, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer at the time and ambassador to the UK, is not immune from prosecution as new revelations reinforce the idea of a US cover-up.
Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhnyi has taken up duties as ambassador to Great Britain (Image source: babel.ua via 21 Century Wire)
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La versión en inglés de este artículo se publicó originalmente en 21st Century Wire, la de en español en Diario16plus. Se puede leer gratis en español en este enlace.
The Wall Street Journal reported in August that Ukraine carried out the largest act of industrial sabotage in history and the most pressing geopolitical mystery of the century: the attack on the $20 billion Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that carried Russian natural gas to Europe across the Baltic Sea.
But the WSJ, according to six legal scholars who spoke on the record to 21st Century Wire, has omitted a key component of the story.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, “was later appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, a position that grants him immunity from prosecution,” the paper states.
Yet is it accurate that General Zaluzhniy, Ukraine’s senior military officer at the time the underwater explosions ruptured the pipelines, has immunity from prosecution as an ambassador?
According to six legal experts, who have expertise in diplomatic and consular law, the answer is “no,” highlighting a critical omission in the WSJ’s reporting. This crucial oversight has not been previously reported.
General Zaluzhniy “is not immune from criminal prosecution,” says John B. Quigley, author of over a dozen books on international law, “only in the UK.”
The WSJ’s seemingly bombshell Nord Stream article exonerates President Volodymyr Zelensky, reporting that “four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot” allege he initially sanctioned the plan but later tried to stop it at the behest of the CIA. Yet Gen. Zaluzhniy, who was overseeing the operation, greenlighted the attack.
As such, Gen. Zaluzhniy appears to be assigned the role of fall guy for both Zelensky and the CIA. But the paper, if its reporting can be taken at face value, is all too quick to claim that Gen. Zaluzhniy’s ambassadorship permits him to dodge accountability.
Andrew Sanger, a legal scholar whose research includes the law of immunity, agreed with Quigley’s assessment. The “obligation on states to grant immunity from prosecution applies to the receiving State [the UK] (i.e., the State in which the ambassador is located and acts as such),” he wrote in an email.
Whether or not one believes the WSJ’s report of a Ukrainian sabotage operation, the story has already set in motion in a series of scheming diplomatic maneuvers, as part of a wider high-stakes geopolitical chess match involving multiple NATO member states, Ukraine and Russia.
Can Germany bring Zaluzhniy to justice?
Gazprom, the state-run Russian energy giant, owns 51% of Nord Stream 1, alongside four European companies, and 100% of Nord Stream 2. The 1,224-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines run from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany. In September 2022, leaks were detected in three of the four lines in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark.
Following the detection of the leaks, Germany, Sweden and Denmark each initiated separate criminal probes. Both Sweden and Denmark terminated their investigations without unmasking the perpetrator(s). The German investigation is allegedly ongoing. Mainstream media reports surfaced in August that Berlin had obtained an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver suspected of being part of the team directed by Gen. Zaluzhniy to execute the sabotage. Russia, the majority owner of the pipelines, was excluded from all three countries’ investigations. In February 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report based on a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning” that the sabotage was a covert operation by the CIA.
Four days after the leaks were detected, former President Biden said that the US would “be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened.” However, at the time of writing, the US has not taken any public measures to identify the perpetrators or bring them to justice.
There is ample incentive for Germany to bring the saboteurs to justice, even at the risk of precipitating a dramatic diplomatic struggle with Ukraine, Poland or other Western allies. Among the European energy firms that owned 49% of Nord Stream 1, two are German: Wintershall and E.ON. The German economy may never fully recover from the loss of cost-effective Russian natural gas as it accounted for as much as a staggering 66% of Germany’s gas consumption, and 42% of its supply. Both the IMF and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have projected the German economy to be the worst-performing among advanced economies for the second consecutive year. An Associated Press analysis called the loss of Russia natural gas “an unprecedented shock to Germany’s energy-intensive industries, long the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe.”
So could Germany pursue a criminal case against Gen. Zaluzhniy?
To read the full article for free, click here. This article originally appeared at 21st Century Wire.
La versión en inglés de este artículo se publicó originalmente en 21st Century Wire, la de en español en Diario16plus. Se puede leer gratis en español en este enlace.