RENTED YACHT
German investigators believed the unidentified group were made up of five men and one woman using professionally falsified passports, according to a separate report by several German media.
German officials had identified the boat suspected to have been used in the attack, according to the broadcasters ARD, SWR and weekly Zeit.
The yacht in question is said to have been rented out by a company based in Poland, belonging to two Ukrainians, per the German report, which referred only to sources in multiple countries.
The commando group are said to have set sail from the north German port of Rostock on Sep 6, 2022 and was localised the following day on the Danish island of Christianso in the Baltic.
The yacht was subsequently returned to the owner uncleaned, with investigators able to find traces of explosives on the table in the cabin, according to the detailed report.
The pipelines were ruptured by subsea explosives on Sep 26, seven months after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
US officials have “no firm conclusions” about the intelligence, “leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services”, the Times said.
The lack of a firm suspect meant international intelligence officials had not ruled out the possibility of a “false flag” operation to link the attack to Ukraine, per the German media.
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