Machine translation of the whole article (emphasis added by me):

The first Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital had barely been repelled when, in the spring of 2022, men from the US foreign intelligence agency CIA and Ukrainian sabotage specialists met in Kyiv’s Podil district. It was apparently a familiar group; they had known each other for years.

The Ukrainians, according to insiders, had brought an idea: they wanted to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines. These pipes transported billions of cubic meters of gas from Russia to Germany, thus financing Moscow’s war against their country. The Americans apparently liked the plan, Ukrainian participants later told confidants.

Further meetings between the CIA representatives and the masterminds of the attacks on the gas pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea are said to have followed. SPIEGEL was able to speak with several people in Ukraine who reported details of the meetings. According to their accounts, the Americans knew about the attack plans much earlier than previously known.

According to the report, US agents appeared to the planners of the Nord Stream attack in the spring of 2022 to be at least sympathetic listeners. Insiders report that they exchanged technical details of the sabotage operation.

Huh, so not only “they held encouraging meetings” as the headline implies, but also they literally gave Ukraine all the info they were missing on how to do it. Sounds a lot more active than what the headline implies.

Was this true? Confronted with the findings, a CIA spokeswoman called the account “completely and utterly false.” The CIA declined to specify what exactly was wrong with it.

Despite the US intelligence agency’s denial, SPIEGEL has decided to report on these events. The editorial team has known the Ukrainian sources for years, and their information has proven accurate. They were aware of details of the attack early on, details which were later confirmed by German investigators.

The accounts make an already sensitive issue for the government in Berlin even more uncomfortable.

Former Ukrainian commando Serhiy K. is currently in pretrial detention in Hamburg. He is alleged to have been involved in the detonation of the pipelines in September 2022. Several men and a woman sailed across the Baltic Sea on a rented yacht called “Andromeda.” Near the island of Bornholm, divers placed military-grade explosives on the gas pipelines on the seabed.

According to a detention order issued by the Federal Court of Justice in the case of Serhiy K., which became public in mid-January, the operation was “highly likely” state-directed. The state in question is Ukraine—the very country that the German government has been supporting with billions of euros since the Russian attack.

We’ll come back to Ukraine being “the directing state” after a few paragraphs

Now it has emerged that US intelligence officials apparently knew about the attack plan in its early stages and initially allegedly did not object. According to the investigation, they only later changed their minds and warned the Ukrainians against carrying out the plan—to no avail.

Serhiy K. is associated with Roman Chervinsky, a specialist in covert operations and sabotage who previously worked for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). He is considered the mastermind behind the attacks. Now 51, Chervinsky was part of an elite unit established by the CIA after the 2014 Maidan Revolution

Oh, so a CIA-trained operative blew up the Nordstream with, at the very least, knowledge of this by the CIA and technical assistance from the CIA. Makes it seem more like it was the US behind this all along

The so-called 5th Directorate of the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) made a name for itself with spectacular operations against pro-Russian separatists. Targeted killings were also part of the secret unit’s repertoire. When Chervinsky transferred to the Ukrainian military intelligence service HUR in 2019, the covert work against Moscow continued – often with the help of the US.

Nooooo, this is Russian propaganda!!! How could he have been acting against Russia with support from the USA if the war began in 2022!!!

After a failed operation, Chervinsky had to leave the intelligence service in 2020. But with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his skills were needed again. Initially, the sabotage expert helped defend Kyiv. When the Russians were repelled at the gates of the capital, the old group of commando specialists reunited – this time with the special forces of the Ukrainian army.

In principle, it didn’t matter over the years which service or unit you belonged to, says a former Ukrainian member of these commando units. “We worked together with the Americans.”

I suspect this is slightly pointing towards collaboration between Nazis and the US agencies

In the spring of 2022, new ideas were apparently needed to inflict significant damage on Russia, the enemy in the war. An old idea resurfaced among the men: attacking the Nord Stream pipelines.

The pipelines in the Baltic Sea had long been a thorn in the side of Ukraine and most Western nations. Nord Stream allowed Russia to supply Europe directly, bypassing Ukraine’s gas network. Kyiv lost crucial transit fees as a result. At the same time, the pipelines made Germany, the most powerful country in Europe, dependent on the Kremlin. Without them, the Russians would lose a significant political bargaining chip, the saboteurs reasoned.

The pipelines had been a thorn in the side of most Western nations by checks notes providing cheap energy to Europe? As for dependence from the Kremlin, diversifying the supply of energy among different geopoltical blocks can hardly be argued to be dependence, dependence is what Germany has now, when it relies exclusively on USA liquefied fossil gas for its energy supply, instead of being able to choose fossil gas from Russia and from the USA (most of it from the former due to, you know, it being cheaper). If Germany wanted energy independence it shouldn’t have allowed the destruction of the European photovoltaic industry or destroyed its nuclear power plants.

The US, too, had never been a fan of the more than 1,200-kilometer-long gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany. In early 2022, then-US President Joe Biden, in light of the planned commissioning of Nord Stream 2, threatened to end the project: if Russia invaded Ukraine, there would be “no more Nord Stream 2.”

For weeks and months, the Ukrainians developed a plan to have divers plant bombs on the pipelines. They considered various routes and vessels, deliberated about the explosives, and searched for suitable men and women capable of diving to depths of up to 80 meters. The saboteurs even gave the operation a codename: Operation “Diameter.”

According to insiders, the operation was ultimately approved in Ukraine by the then-army chief, Valery Zalushny. However, it was not approved by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The secret commando unit did not inform the presidential administration, sources in Kyiv claim.

At the same time, according to Ukrainian insiders, there were repeated meetings with the Americans to discuss the planned operation. “They told our guys: That’s good, that works,” says one man familiar with the discussions. The Ukrainians claim not to have received any warnings at that point; quite the opposite.

“If you place the bombs in this manner, it will work” is more than encouragement, it’s explicit participation in the operation.

According to her account, a signal of support came from the CIA as early as the second meeting: Go ahead with it. And even more: On the Ukrainian side, the impression even arose that the US agents could help with financing the plan

Waiting for the evidence to come out in 50 years that the money circled back to the CIA :D

The CIA declined to comment on this when contacted by SPIEGEL. The intelligence agency merely stated that SPIEGEL’s research was “extremely inaccurate” and should “not be read as factual information.”

In the spring of 2022, according to US security sources, Washington’s interests were completely different. At that time, the focus was on organizing the greatest possible support for Ukraine. Why would the US condone an attack on the infrastructure of an ally?

Der Spiegel reports that the CIA held multiple meetings with the Nord Stream saboteurs

:o who wouoda thunk!!! Tankies carrying the eternal burden of being right

Also, if only there were a word to refer to someone who knowingly allows someone else to commit a crime… Like, we could probably prosecute it if they accomplish the crime in the end. Oh well, only speculation.

Edit: the article clearly states that the CIA shared the know-how of how to do this, and the “Ukrainian operatives” who carried it out had been trained by the CIA since at least 2014. The headline is extremely misleading, they CIA is not just an accomplice, it’s a full actor in this.

Probably the CIA withdrew support of those “saboteurs” because they realized their plan just wasn’t feasible, so the U.S. would just have to do it itself. Which it then did.

This is all fake. It was done by US Navy seals deployed from the USS Kearsarge during and after the Baltic military exercises

Suurrreee I am suuurreee the CIA did