YouSaid · the spoken record

Bojan Pancevski

lines on the record: 35
first: 2026-06-21
most recent: 2026-06-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Their energy infrastructure is being destroyed every day by the ever more improved Ukrainian drone program. So I think they'd be wary of starting a full-on kind of shadow war against the West. And the West is not like, you know, countries like the United Kingdom or the United States are much less likely to go there. What I realized in the course of my reporting is that there's nothing really you can do to protect the pipeline like that. A pipeline like that runs 1,200 kilometers along the seabed of the Baltic Sea. It's pretty much impossible to protect the entire length of it at all times, you know. And so if a non-state actor, you know, such a terror organization, you know, Islamic State or whoever would figure it out, you know, and they have done that in the past, you know, think about 9-11. That was also kind of done on the shoestring, you know, they used pilots, they used suicide.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trump got elected, or since he got into office, the Russians have been holding back a little bit because they did believe there is a possibility of making a deal with this guy. And I think that culminated around that Alaska Sammit when he actually meet when Trump and Putin met. So there is still, I think, some residual hope in the Russian system that they might reach a deal and an overarching deal with the Americans, because that's what all they care about. They see Europe, including Britain as a kind of a vazaal of the United States, not really worth talking to. And they're hoping to kind of cut a deal with Trump, essentially. So I think they are holding back to an extent. And certainly the West is holding back. Once you start doing these things, you open yourself kind of potential retaliation and the Russians can't afford that at the moment because they are being hammered by Ukrainian drones.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“War pipelines have been damaged undersea cables have been severed. Satellites have been affected. There's a lot of covert sabotage happening. The Russians were extremely active in Western Europe, including in Great Britain. I think there are some trials in London finishing or even having finished by now of people of kind of civilian proxies who acted on behalf of Russia, who were hired on social media to set a warehouse on fire or do something similar. So I think things are happening not at that scale because I believe none of the actors, so NATO countries and Russia are yet ready to escalate to a point where they would destroy a major asset like that of the other side because then they would expose themselves to retaliation. And I think I certainly know that since”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, it needs to be said that the attack on Nord Stream is quite unique in the analysis of sabotage and kind of military operations. Nothing like that has been attempted before. It's probably the biggest act of sabotage in modern time, you know? I mean, anything like that can be disputed, but it's pretty unique. And I think it's also unique in the sense that it was done on the cheap. It was done on a shoestring. The whole operation cost around $250,000, which is extremely cheap for any such operation, especially bearing in mind that the pipeline system costs around $20 billion to build. So that's an incredible kind of return for investment on behalf of the saboteurs. And I think why it hasn't happened at that scale since the war. So first of all, a lot of things have happened since the war.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certification became a moot point. So the sanctions will block any kind of effort of doing something about it. And I think personally, I think it's unlikely, but the Russians have a very long breath. The difference between Vladimir Putin and any European or American leader is that he's not going to be voted out of office, right? And in fact, they did a story recently about him investing in longevity science. So he plans, he said he plans to live to the age of 150. So, you know, he's not going anywhere, let me put it that way. There's no real democracy in Russia, quite obviously. And so he can wait for an opportune moment. I mean, it's not inconceivable that the pro-Russian opposition at one point will become part of a German federal government. It's very unlikely at the moment, but who knows what the future holds. So I wouldn't exclude it, but in...”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Relatively unlikely but possible is that there would be some sort of a ceasefire, but I doubt there will be a comprehensive peace treaty. And in that context, I can't imagine Germany reopening Nord Stream, right? I mean, certainly not any establishment party in government would agree to that because at present there are sanctions against the pipeline system as a whole and there are European sanctions and American sanctions, even if the Americans would lift their sanctions, that's conceivable. You know, if Trump makes an arrangement, he can always have them lifted. But the Europeans won't. And so, and even if the Europeans would magically lift the sanctions, Germany will still need to approve this as a nation state, as a government, and its regulators would have to certify parts of the pipeline. First of all, because the older pipeline was damaged and the newer pipeline was never even certified for political reasons. And then when the war...”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I personally don't think it's feasible for that to happen unless we have a very comprehensive peace treaty with Ukraine that will end the war and kind of satisfy the Europeans that the Russians have sort of gone out of their way to resolve this matter and stop their aggression. And I don't think that's likely at all. What I think is likely...”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So look, I mean, when the Trump administration started negotiating a peace arrangement, some sort of settlement with the Russians last year, the Russians brought up Nord Stream fairly early. I think perhaps even in the first session they had in Saudi Arabia. And then later on, Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation publicly even said that Nord Stream is part of the negotiation and has to be reopened. I think the Russians want that. It's perfectly clear they do want that. I was told recently that they've raised the issue recently again in the talks with Whitcoff and Jared Kushner and the son-in-law of Donald Trump. And both of them are now acting as negotiators on behalf of the president of the United States. So the Russians wanted. They've made various kind of advances to the Americans and I think to the Germans through various back channels.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Government were upset with my coverage. I mean, I Not wanting to give away too much. I'd like the listeners or viewers to buy the book, but there is an anecdote where I describe how one of them intervened to stop what are my stories from coming, you know, the people I spoke to, I quote one of them by name, he kind of denies everything and he's upset about the very suggestion that the government could have something to do with it. So, you know, but I know how to navigate that world because I've known it for quite a long time. And I think ultimately people who are familiar with it inside and outside of Ukraine will, I think, recognize the circumstances I describe.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of a checkered picture, you know, it's reality is never black and white. And, you know, I hasten to add, though, because the corruption of Ukraine has bizarrely been used by the Russians and by their proxies in the West as some sort of a justification for the invasion. You know, Ukraine is anyway corrupt and we shouldn't support it as if, you know, if you're corrupt, you deserve to be massacred and bombarded and kind of you have your cities and villages kind of leveled and torched to the ground. That's obviously a bizarre argument. And a lot of countries are corrupt and certainly we wouldn't support invading them. And finally, Russia obviously is much more corrupt in Ukraine itself. Although it's an academic contest, I mean, we're talking about very high levels of corruption. So, you know, to answer your question, some people within Zelensky.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ukrainian intelligence, I think all of them were, as one of them told me, Al-Mamater, my alma mater is the SPU, which is the biggest intelligence service of Ukraine. It's comparable to the FSB in Russia. And it was actually kind of modeled on the KGB, the big old notorious Soviet service. Some of them are actually extremely opposed to that corruption and have been fighting it throughout their careers and I have suffered for it, you know. Others then again, you know, one figure I describe in the book has himself engaged in corruption. He's made a lot of money when he was in a very senior position in one of the intelligence services through procurements arrangements and other things he was able to make a small fortune for himself and his family.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To pay for the bail and others, very senior figures from Zelansk government have been removed or were forced to flee. And in many ways, in the post Soviet realm, which Ukraine is part of, although now it's emancipating itself from it, obviously, by obvious means fighting for its independence, you know, it's quite typical for the intelligence services to be enforcers of some sort of political regime, but also some sort of political corruption or corruption full stop. So that is, you know, Russia is by these standards of, for example, transparency international, Russia is more corrupt than Ukraine. So, you know, these countries, Belarus, Ukraine and the other post-Soviet republics, they tend to be quite corrupt. And intelligence services play a central role in this. And Ukraine is no different. So the people I portray in the book from they come from that world of intelligence.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I portray things the way I saw them, the way I witnessed him, you know, objectively, I hope. Like I said, I've been reporting from and about Ukraine since 2014. It's now 12 years. I know the country quite well. It is not, you know, in terms of rule of law, it is certainly not comparable to Germany or to the United Kingdom or to any kind of Western democracy. It is still it is a young, fragile democracy. It is plagued by enormous corruption at every level of society and government layer. You know, there are a bunch of scandals now erupting around President Vladimir Zelensky himself, you know, his own chief of staff was forced to resign and he was even detained for a few days as part of a corruption probe and he had to kind of fork out $3 million to”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“German government. It's a conservative led government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. And equally, they are slightly embarrassed about what might come out of it. But they're not trying to stop it, right? So the German police acted on motivations which are completely admirable. They wanted to do their job. They were extremely professional. They were extremely, I think, objective in pursuing the avenues for their investigation. And they were excluding suspects in a logical, methodical manner. So, you know, it was, I think all around, I hope to have portrayed everyone. A way that does justice to their work.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would have investigated anyone, you know, and they didn't care, it was just like a kind of rule of law in the wild, you know, for me to observe. That's how a rule of law state functions. The politicians were not always happy with the findings of the German investigators. I mean, the previous government of Germany under Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not impede in any way the investigation, but they were keeping a lid on it and they were certainly not looking forward to a scandal revealing that Ukraine or someone in Ukraine is behind the attack because they unleashed a huge program of support of the Ukrainian struggle against Russian aggression. And Germany is now, I think, the biggest Western backer or the biggest backer full stop of Ukraine after the Trump administration kind of pulled back a little bit. And the present...”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like Russia, because by the time of the full scale invasion, Putin had started several wars. He invaded Georgia, he had invaded Ukraine and separate parts of its territory. He annexed the Kremlin Peninsula, sorry, the Crimean Peninsula. So, you know, the Ukrainian motivation was not financial, not criminal. There was no criminal energy involved. There were patriotic kind of saboteurs. Whereas the Germans were also patriotic. They were also people who are doing their job. They didn't care about the politics of their investigation, which is hugely political. It's very politically charged what they were doing or are doing, but they never to my knowledge and during the period that I observed them, they never cared really about the politics. It could have been the Americans. They did investigate the Americans. In fact, they investigated the Russians.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Similar motives, right? The Ukrainians were driven by patriotism. They wanted to interrupt the cash flow that Russia had at the time of the planning of the operation from Nord Stream, and they wanted to sever that geopolitical bond between Western Europe and Russia because by the time of the full scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union was getting almost half of its gas from Russia. And in Germany, that figure was even higher. I think over half of the gas Germany was consuming or importing was coming from one supplier, you know, and that is something quite extraordinary. You don't really want to do that in any kind of realm of the economy or your personal life. Why would you be dependent on someone so much when you're obviously open to all sorts of pressures and blackmails? And especially if that someone is increasingly rogue international actor.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and they are also extremely capable, you know. I mean, whatever crime the Ukrainians committed in the eyes of the German law, they were extremely capable in what they did. And their motivation was patriotism, right? It wasn't terror or criminal intent. And I think this is recognized by the investigators as well, by the way. So I kind of learned to respect the abilities of all these protagonists without getting emotionally involved or approving, you know, when in doubt, of course, I stand for law and order. I will be on the side of law and order in doubt. But I did, you know, I think the portrayal tends to be, or at least I've tried for the portrayal of the characters to be as unbiased and as objective as possible. I'm trying to kind of describe who they are and what they are and why they acted the way they did. And it's interesting that both sets of protagonists are acting on”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would never take an anti German position. I lived in Germany for almost eight years. I know. Sympathy, you know, at a human level, once you get to know someone well, you establish a relationship and it's common with a source, kind of source journalist relationship where you know him quite well and you try to understand them or at least believe to understand them. And for me, you know, I have respect for all my sources because typically they are extraordinary people. I mean, I tend to do investigative journalism and a lot of my sources are very unusual. They're law enforcement. They're sometimes from the intelligence community, sometimes politicians, sometimes they're criminals. And in the past, I've investigated criminal networks and stuff. And I always have respect for them, right? I mean, it's like sympathy. I don't know. I tend not to get involved emotionally with in stories like that, but I certainly have great respect for everyone I describe in the book because they acted on very strong motives.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other aspect of the book. I think I tried to tell the story from the perspective of the people who carried out the operation, which is a crime in Germany. And the people who are investigating that crime, the investigators, the detectives. And when I met the both groups of people, I realized these are extremely cinematic characters, absolutely extraordinary. And I thought you would need a book to tell the story. It's not enough to do kind of daily journalism or weekly journalism on it. It's something, it's a kind of a large format narrative.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Direct access to the people who did it because I had been reporting on Ukraine from the Ukrainian front lines since 2014 and I reported about Ukraine ever since. And so it turned out that I had this network of contacts in Ukrainian intelligence and counterintelligence who at the end kind of provided the link to the people behind it. And I even had met one of the masterminds of the operation before the war started. I met him in Kiev. I described that in the prologue of the book. But it took me about a year, I think. I'm not sure exactly how long, but it took me a long time to actually realize I've got direct access to this conspiracy. And so, you know, in the moment when I realized who are the people behind this, by that time I already had known who the German detectives are, which is the”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were many explosions, I think six explosions were registered. So people thought this is a gigantic amount of explosives. It must have involved a huge submarine, a huge ship, big underwater drones and things, you know. And it sounded all very filmical, cinematic, and interesting. And obviously, you know, the initial assumption was is a state actor. I mean, why would a private actor do this? So it must be a state in which state has the capacity. And then, you know, all these rumors are swirling. Was it the Americans? Was it the British even? There was a time. And I think some people still try to claim that it was the SAS or someone like that. You know, was it Russia? And so on. So I started looking into it literally from the first moment I saw the pictures on my mobile phone. And then, you know, it took me a while to realize that I actually had direct”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Essentially, I started working on the story on the second day after the explosions took place because the explosions were reported on the first day and then the first images came out, you know, these kind of now iconic images of eruption, water kind of bubbling in the middle of the Baltic Sea. And as soon as I saw the footage, I knew this was gigantic. And I kind of started working on that story. I knew it would be an amazing story because it was pretty obvious that it was sabotage. And at the time, nobody quite knew how you do a sabotage like that, right? A lot of experts who were summoned by journalists like me and other outlets were saying things which they believed must be plausible. They turned out not to be plausible. I mean, one popular opinion was that you would need at least 500 kilos of TNT explosives to cause that sort of damage at one point.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ukraine belongs to that. So essentially, for him, lucrative deals are great, but if they are standing in a way of imperial expansion, then tough luck. And that's exactly what happened.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're thinking in Germany, in Berlin, and this is across the aisle, across the political spectrum, you know, and certainly captains of the industry and entrepreneurs and people like that would always say, well, look, we got a great deal with the Russians. They're not going to be insane to tamper with this no matter what the war brings or whatever, you know, they need the money. Who on earth in their rational state of mind would damage a lucrative relationship like this? And I think the failure to understand Putin's reasoning led to this because Putin, of course, is a rational actor. But he sets his priorities and his priority was explained in many of his speeches and writings. He wrote an essay about Ukraine. And basically his priority is to expand the Russian Empire to make Russia great again by re-including territories that he believes are Russian heartland.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said everything I did, she kind of completely refused to repent or to allow any doubt about her decisions or any self-critique, which is interesting for a memoir. And then she said, essentially, it was the cheapest gas on the market. It was obviously the right thing to do, to buy this gas because it fueled the growth of the German economy. And the German economy, to a large extent, relies on industry. And industry is quite often fueled by gas. And then, of course, German homes, I think the majority of them are heated by gas. In fact, you know, I own an apartment. I live now in Spain, but I do own an apartment in Germany and we have gas for heating. So everyone in Germany has kind of touched more or less by the situation with gas imports. And her argument was it was the cheapest gas and they were always reliable. And even when the war started, people...”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The worst years of the Cold War, and the Soviets always, always, always delivered gas and then oil. So it's irrational to think that they would do something else because they need the money. They need our money. We need their gas and they're giving us the best price on the market. And there's the rub. Germany did get the best price on the market. Germany got much cheaper gas coming from Nord Stream than countries that are very close to Russia got from Russia because gas is a commodity and Gazprom, the state controlled giant, can set the prices whichever way they like. Basically Vladimir Putin personally can make a decision. Germany will get cheaper gas. And apparently he did make that decision. You know, after the whole Shebang, after the war kind of started and everything, and Angela Merkel retired, she wrote a memoir. And in that memoir, she”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I cover that project pretty much from the onset, and I spoke to the sort of key players. I attended briefings by Angela Merkel when she discussed this off the record. I spoke to her sort of main aides, including the economy minister who was in charge of that portfolio. And they all would say, look, we've”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That arrangement continued, right? I mean, even during the war, Ukraine was eliciting kind of money out of it. So the Ukrainians were very much opposed because they felt Nord Stream was the idea of Nord Stream was to circumvent them and then sort of cut them out of the business deal, but also made them vulnerable to an aggression from Russia. concern was dismissed in Germany and other countries as exaggerated but it has to be said that the people who said that at the time now feel vindicated because the moment Nord Stream was completed basically Putin did invade Ukraine the first time in 2014 when Nord Stream 1 was completed and the second time in 2022 when Nord Stream 2 was completed so people who claim that originally now feel that what they've been saying all along was always true”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ribbentrop Molopact, which was a pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to kind of divide Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. So the pipeline had many, many enemies. Basically towards the end, Germany was the only country pretty much from the major European economies that was basically bulldozing this project in the shape of Angula Merkel. I think by that time people had turned against it. Even the French president Emmanuel Macron was opposed to it. He publicly kind of commented on that and so on. And obviously the biggest opponent in many ways was Ukraine because there are older Soviet era pipelines that run through Ukraine and Ukraine used to get lucrative transit fees for that. And even until January 2020,”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was highly controversial because a lot of countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom, were very much opposed to it. The United Kingdom, I think, was opposed together with the United States to both pipelines because they felt we shouldn't make ourselves reliant on Russian gas because Russia can use that reliance, which later became addiction, in fact, as a geopolitical method of coercion, even as a weapon. Eastern Europeans hated the pipeline, the now deputy prime minister of Poland, Radek Sikorsky, even likened it to”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who has now reinvented himself as the head of NATO and is a big hawk when Russia was there and was quite happy to open this Russian slash European pipeline. So it was basically serving the Western European market, not just Germany. It's quite often forgotten that Germany wasn't alone in this, at least not from the onset. Then came Nord Stream 2, and that was a much more controversial pipeline because by then Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014, it had kind of done a lot of transgressions on the international stage that the tensions between Europe and the West in general and Russia were escalating. And so Nord Stream 2 was built later and it was pushed by Germany mainly. Or to be more specific, by Angela Merkel, the former German Chancellor.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's important to note that, like I said, there were two pipelines, I mean, two parallel pipelines part of the same system. And the first, the older one, Nord Stream 1, was actually a pan-European consortium. The majority share or the largest share was held by the Russians where the gas originates. But the rest of it was ownership of European companies from Germany, but also from France, the Netherlands, etc. So that was a time, I think the first line of Nord Stream 1 became operational in 2011. So that was a time when people still wanted to trade with Russia. And if you look at the pictures from the festive opening, the Prime Minister of France at the time, Fran ⁇ ois Fillon, is there sort of smiling abroad smile. There are representatives of the European Commission.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lines Nord Stream 1, which is the older pipeline, and Nord Stream 2, which was built a bit later. And both of them had two sort of strings each two lines each. So in total, there are four actual pipes going beneath the sea and landing in Germany connecting Russia and Germany.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, thank you so much for the kind words. It was meant to read like a thriller because I've done some kind of field study with the publishers and it turns out not many people read nowadays, you know, because of the algorithms, because of other ways of absorbing information. So I was hoping that I'll be able to write a narrative that people actually try and read. So thank you ever so much for that and for the invitation. Nord Stream was or is to a point the largest, the world largest offshore pipeline system. It was channeling, it was built to channel Russian natural gas, which goes all the way from the permafrost of Siberia through European Russia and then underneath the Baltic Sea and kind of lands in Germany in a place called Lubmin. And the pipeline system had two pipelines.”
2026-06-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who Really Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline? With Bojan Pancevski · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT