A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage

It was the kind of outlandish scheme that might bubble up in a bar around closing time. 

In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream.

After all, the twin natural-gas pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe were providing billions to the Kremlin war machine. What better way to make Vladimir Putin pay for his aggression?

Just over four months later, in the small hours of Sept. 26, Scandinavian seismologists picked up signals indicating an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption hundreds of miles away, near the Danish island of Bornholm. They were caused by three powerful explosions and the largest-ever recorded release of natural gas, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark.