WSJ: Drunk Ukrainian General Responsible for Blowing Up Nord Stream

Monumental act of industrial sabotage, releasing largest volume of "climate damaging methane" in history, blamed on group of rogue yachtsmen/adventurers.

The Wall Street Journal is just out with the following:

Recall the incident: On Monday, September 26, 2022, on the bottom of the Baltic Sea at a depth of 260 feet, three explosions ruptured three out of four massive pipes composed of steel encased in concrete.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the sabotage was carried out by a six-member Ukrainian team that rented a 50-foot pleasure sailing yacht named Andromeda in a German marina, sailed to the targeted position over the pipeline, and used civilian divers to place up to 200 pounds of military grade explosive onto three different points on three of the four pipelines, all performed with the skill of a trained underwater demolition crew.

According to the Wall Street Journal

Within days, Zelensky approved the plan, according to the four people familiar with the plot. All arrangements were made verbally, leaving no paper trail.

But the next month, the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD learned of the plot and warned the CIA, according to several people familiar with the Dutch report. U.S. officials then promptly informed Germany, according to U.S. and German officials.

The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation, U.S. officials said. The Ukrainian president then ordered Zalyzhniy to halt it, according to Ukrainian officers and officials familiar with the conversation as well as Western intelligence officials. But the general ignored the order, and his team modified the original plan, these people said.

While I am just getting acquainted with this story, it contains many elements that strike me as implausible. It seems to me that a more plausible working hypothesis is that the Wall Street Journal story is a bunch of baloney proffered to absolve Zelensky and the CIA from the blame for this massive act of industrial sabotage that released billions of cubic meters of methane gas into the atmosphere. Given his zealous dedication to getting rid of methane gas from cattle herds, Bill Gates strikes me as conspicuously silent about this environmental disaster.