Lots of back and forth on this one.
In an exclusive story, The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that "three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces."
The newspaper wrote that a European intelligence service collected the information and shared it with the CIA in June 2022. The details "provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure," the Post reported.
The European intelligence report was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Post said it obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.
When asked about the story during a briefing Tuesday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to “engage in a discussion about intelligence matters from the podium specifically with regard to that disclosure or any of the other,” he said. “And in this case, certainly not going to speak to one that The Washington Post even said was not corroborated by U.S. intelligence agencies.”
IMHO the whole Andromeda yacht story at best a effort to divert attention.
As a diver and yacht owner I am calling BS on the concept.
It is very hard for people, even experienced divers and captains, tk put the pieces together. Can you dive 200 feet? Sure. Can you dive from a yacht? Sure. Can you plant explosives? Sure.
Can 6 people take a sailboat off shore for a week, a sailboat not designed for the work, put divers down multiple times, recover them in 4’ to 6’ seas, with no recovery gear, do it over a precise location, and return the boat in near perfect condition? Not a chance in hell.
I could go on and on. Once you put all the pieces together; boat, weather, task, time frame it just does not add up. For a start stand at you kitchen counter, put a 40 lb pack of potatoes in a back pack. Now imagine getting on the counter as it goes up and down 4 feet every 4 seconds. And the reality is far harder than that for when a sail boat (like the Andromeda) derives its stability from the wind pressure in the sail AND from the water moving over the deep fin keel, which itself is an aerofoil form. Stop the boat and it looses most of its stability, you can’t even steer it. It is nearly impossible to stand up, handholds are required to move around.
Most people have a hard time envisioning what even moderate conditions are like.