A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation.

A decorated colonel in Ukraine’s special forces was the “coordinator” of the underwater explosions that rocked the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in September 2022, roiling Europe’s energy markets amid Ukraine’s war with Russia, a report said Saturday.

A Ukrainian military officer involved with the country’s intelligence services allegedly played a leading role in the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

Roman Chervinsky, a 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukrainian Special Forces, was the “coordinator” of the operation to blow up the pipeline, according to the Post. Chervinsky’s role allegedly involved managing logistics for the team that rented a sailboat and used diving equipment to plant explosives on the pipelines.

So whodunnit? Who destroyed the Nord Stream 2 at three minutes past midnight on September 26, 2021? Explosives set 262 feet below the surface of the Baltic caused a blast registering 2.5 on the Richter Scale. It ripped apart the $11 billion gas pipeline that fed Russian gas directly into Germany and Western Europe and blew up global geopolitics as well.

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

The United States was reportedly told by a European spy agency that the Ukrainian military planned to attack the Nord Stream gas pipelines covertly three months before they were bombed.

The intelligence would mean that, for nearly a year, the U.S. and other European allies had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage.

The United States learned of a Ukrainian plan to attack the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines three months before they were damaged last September by underwater explosions, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing leaked information posted online.

The CIA learned last June, through a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to blow up the Russia-to-Germany project, the newspaper reported.

In the month since veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published his bombshell report alleging that President Joe Biden personally authorized a covert action to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines, we’ve seen a frenzy of speculation, detailed dissection of Hersh’s specific assertions, and the emergence of competing narratives both supporting and denouncing the report.

New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.