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Suspicious sailing yacht found : Nord Stream attack: The role of the Andromeda

With the help of a sailing yacht, the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines are said to have been carried out. ZDF Frontal has found the Andromeda. Is the one-ship thesis plausible?

After days of searching, we found it: Jacked up in an old military port on the island of Rügen, there it's in storage - the sailing yacht "Andromeda", perhaps the most political ship in the world at the moment. It is said to have played a central role in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September. This was the result of new research by the ARD and the "Times".
Six people - including two divers - are said to have set sail with her from Rostock. The target: the tubes at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, at depths of 70 and 88 meters, which finally exploded on September 26.

We rent a similar yacht of the charterer - the "Unsinkbar 2" - and sail with skippers to Wiek, out on the Baltic Sea. We retrace part of the path that the Andromeda - presumably loaded with explosives - is said to have taken. Can a single ship and a crew of six people commit such a complex attack? What role did the Andromeda play? The Andromeda is a 15 meter long sailing yacht, of the type Bavaria C50. Her charterer rented her out in September from the port of Rostock "Hohe Düne". From there she is said to have set off and then stopped in Wiek on Rügen. Between 16 and 18 September, she is said to have been with the Danish island of Christiansø. A few days later, the pipelines exploded nearby. Currently, the Andromeda is on land - in an old military port in Dranske on the island of Rügen. In January, German investigators had examined them and, according to the Federal Prosecutor General, found explosive remnants on a table.

Logistics, diving, explosives: what is plausible?

Logistics: Could a group of six people with just one boat have blown up the pipelines on their own? Göran Swistek, an expert in maritime security, has enormous doubts about the one-ship theory: the amount of explosives, the financial resources, the material that has to be carried, plus the approach via the points above the three explosion sites without drifting. "Presumably, other forces will have supported it. Personally, I think it's plausible that either a larger ship was involved or several."
Dive: The detonations on the three pipelines occurred at depths of 70 and 88 meters. To dive down there, you need professionals. Former NVA combat diver Wolfgang Frank calculates that he would plan an hour and a half for work at this depth: three minutes to dive to the bottom, half an hour for work at depth and one hour to slowly resurface. Then three to four hours as regeneration time. ZDF Frontal has presented him with weather data, because a low swell is crucial for diving. Waves of more than half a meter are a real challenge. The professional diver considers two periods to be realistic: September 9 and 10 and September 21-25. So it's a short span. But he says, "It's possible."
Explosives: Investigators estimate that around 500 kilograms of TNT equivalent would be needed per explosion to blow up the pipelines. It is not possible to say exactly how much was used, because it is unclear which explosives were used. But it would be extremely difficult to get something like this secretly, says cyber expert Sandro Gayken. In the Darknet, he finds offers for smaller quantities. But it is difficult to order this undetected: "Especially in the case of explosives, it is not only the police, but also the intelligence services that look into it." The chairman of the Association of Criminal Investigators also has doubts that private actors could have worried about this: "If so, then there is more evidence that these are people who are either connected to state actors or are part of these state actors."

Who could be behind the Nord Stream sabotage?

It is still unclear who the masterminds are. ARD and the Times report on a company in Poland that rented the Andromeda - two Ukrainians are said to be behind it, with contacts to other Ukrainians. The "New York Times" reports of a "pro-Ukrainian group". There are no indications of the government in Kiev. Like the United States and Russia, it strictly rejects involvement in the acts of sabotage. Is a pro-Ukrainian group behind the Nord Stream explosions?

Expert Göran Swistek doubts that a small group of people could accomplish such an act:

The Baltic Sea is heavily trafficked and the Andromeda is therefore only one of many ships that sailed over the gas pipelines at that time. On the one hand, the oil tanker "Minerva Julie", which cruised in the later explosion area for several days and regularly sailed to Russia, is a mystery. A ship of the Navy was also nearby during a period in which the weather would have cooperated. What it did there, a spokesman for the navy ZDF Frontal does not want to tell, that is secret. Only this much: No knowledge of the perpetrators could be obtained.