Now it was an unnamed “pro-Ukrainian group.”

The unsolved mystery of sabotage on the Nord Stream took yet another turn for the suspiciously inconclusive on Tuesday, when US officials said new intelligence suggests the attacks, which engendered bitter finger-pointing and spawned innumerable conspiracy theories, were likely carried out by anti-Kremlin elements acting independently.

To briefly recapitulate, the links were hit by a series of suspected detonations in September. The US and its allies said Russia was likely responsible, while Russian state media alluded to CIA involvement, a claim the Kremlin’s global network of propaganda accomplices amplified. Late in October, Moscow changed their story, blaming, in part, “British specialists” who the Kremlin said were also involved in directing Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Last month, controversial investigative reporter Seymour Hersh claimed the vandalism was the culmination of a “covert sea operation” orchestrated by the Biden administration. (The White House called Hersh’s story “complete fiction.”)

Tuesday’s reporting suggested no Americans or British citizens were involved in the incident. Instead, the perpetrators were “most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals,” according to The New York Times, which noted that,

US officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations. The review of newly collected intelligence suggests they were opponents of Vladimir Putin, but does not specify the members of the group, or who directed or paid for the operation. US officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, 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.

Ukraine’s long-held opposition to the projects suggests a motive, but Kyiv’s logistical capacity to carry out an attack on the links is debatable, to say nothing of how difficult such an operation would presumably be for rogue vigilantes acting on their own, with no state sponsor. I’m no expert on undersea demolitions, but I imagine it’s not something one casually plans with friends over beer and borscht.

I should note that if Ukraine was ultimately behind the attacks, it wouldn’t be the first time US intelligence has cast doubt on the official line from Kyiv. In October, just days after the Nord Stream incident, the Times said the US believed Ukraine was likely responsible for the assassination of Daria Dugina. Kyiv denied any role.

No one — not Ukraine, not Poland, not the Kremlin, not the White House, not Germany, not No. 10 — has offered any evidence to support their own claims about the attacks, but that could change. Apparently, the US is now more confident in its ability to discern who was behind the sabotage and, presumably, whether the perpetrators were aligned with a state actor. Europe is taking the lead in the investigation.

Needless to say, those inclined to blame the CIA will joke that the US is now engaged in an effort to “discover” its own culpability or, even sillier, that the US is now outsourcing that discovery process to Europe, saddling Brussels with a wild goose chase. Or worse, that the Times has been completely duped, and that the US officials (who were unanimous in demanding anonymity) simply co-opted America’s paper of record in what, forgive me, would be a laughably transparent red herring if that’s what it were.

The Times did mention Hersh’s article, calling it (accurately, but amusingly nevertheless) a “Substack newsletter.” The officials who spoke to the Times for Tuesday’s piece said Biden “didn’t authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and there was no US involvement.”

The reporting intimated (but didn’t explicitly suggest) that the proximity of the Dugina assassination and the Nord Stream bombing may be causing consternation in Washington given the US intelligence community’s assessment that the Ukrainian government might’ve been involved in the car bomb that killed the 29-year-old, whose ultranationalist father was the likely target.

Early in October, Kyiv wasn’t shy about broadcasting its involvement in the explosion which collapsed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge. Although Ukraine didn’t officially claim the incident, they did print commemorative stamps. A series of other incidents, including drone attacks on airfields inside Russia, have caused some concern at the White House, given what the brazen operations seem to suggest about Washington’s inability to dissuade Kyiv from engaging in acts that might prompt the Kremlin to cross the nuclear Rubicon.

The US currently has no evidence to suggest Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of, or directed, the attacks on the Nord Stream, but as the Times was keen to note, “any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.”

In Ukraine’s defense: This is a war. If there are rules, Russia certainly isn’t observing them. So why should Zelensky?