Allied Intelligence — 2026-07-04

Book Reveals CIA and Dutch Intelligence Had Advance Warning of Ukrainian Nord Stream Sabotage Operation Diameter

BLUFDocumented pre-attack contact between CIA officers and Operation Diameter's leadership transforms Western governments from bystanders into knowing participants whose inaction now carries legal and diplomatic exposure.

Wall Street Journal correspondent Bojan Pancevski's book "The Nord Stream Conspiracy," released last month, reports that Dutch military intelligence intercepted information about the Ukrainian sabotage plot months before the September 2022 attack and shared it with the CIA 1. The CIA relayed the tip to Germany's BND but labeled the source group "low-confidence" and "rogue," and a senior CIA official told Pancevski the agency warned Ukrainian services against the operation and believed it had been called off 1. Pancevski reports the CIA's Kyiv station chief separately confronted the operation's leader, referred to as "the General," who replied he "would not officially be part of Operation Diameter" 1. The book identifies the chain of command as running through the General to then-commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhny, now Ukraine's ambassador in London, while leaving open whether President Zelensky had knowledge of the plan 1.

Analysis
Confirmation that Dutch and US intelligence held specific pre-attack warning of Operation Diameter narrows the gap between passive awareness and operational complicity, undercutting Washington's and The Hague's public posture of surprise. A CIA station chief's direct confrontation with the operation's leader before the bombing contradicts the "rogue, low-confidence" framing officials used to justify inaction, though that contemporaneous labeling may reflect a genuine intelligence assessment rather than after-the-fact minimization of agency culpability. The account hands Ukrainian defendants a state-authorization argument for the ongoing German prosecution, while the chain of command tracing through Zaluzhny, without resolving Zelensky's knowledge, keeps political liability contained to military leadership as he positions for a possible presidential run. Sourcing traces to a single book-length account, with secondary outlets amplifying rather than independently confirming the claims.

6 sources

The conspiracy of silence surrounding the Nord Stream bombings - The Spectator Australia
The Nord Stream Sabotage: Mystery Attacks Explained - The Cipher Brief
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: An international war story in blockbuster prose - Business Standard
WSJ Journalist Publishes Book on Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage - AllSides
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World - Bojan Pancevski (Celadon Books / Macmillan)
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World - Bojan Pancevski (Celadon Books / Macmillan)