German prosecutors charged a former Ukrainian army officer with being part of a military operation in 2022 that sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines shipping natural gas from Russia to Western Europe.
The suspect is accused of leading a team of accomplices who destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines on Sept. 26, 2022. The explosives were planted near Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea.
“He and his accomplices used a sailing yacht, which departed from Rostock, to transport the devices. The yacht had previously been rented from a German company through intermediaries using forged identification documents,” authorities said following his arrest last year in Italy. “The explosions severely damaged both pipelines.”
Ukrainian media identified the man as Serhiy Kuznetsov, 50. He is accused of attacking civil energy infrastructure, which is considered a war crime under international law. He has denied any involvement in the incident, German media reported.
German prosecutors said Mr. Kuznetsov was the leader of the sabotage group that included several professional divers, an explosives expert and a sailboat captain. They said he entered Germany through Poland using a forged Ukrainian passport.
“He then boarded a sailing yacht suitable for the open sea, with the other members of the group,” the prosecutors said. “The accused and his accomplices transported large quantities of high-performance explosives through international waters.”
The Nord Stream pipelines provided Russia with billions of dollars in revenue before President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
The German prosecutors said the sabotage mission was intended to permanently disrupt gas deliveries and prevent Moscow from using the profits to fund its military operations.
Russia has long suspected that Western nations, particularly the U.S. or Great Britain, were involved in the plot to destroy the pipelines. Washington and London have both denied any involvement in the explosions.
“To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale,” British defense officials said in a statement at the time. “This invented story says more about arguments going on inside the Russian government than it does about the West.”
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office opened its own investigation into the explosion as a case of international terrorism. Dmitry Peskov, Mr. Putin’s press secretary, said Moscow had repeatedly requested information about the detonations but never received it, according to RIA Novosti, a government-controlled news agency in Russia.
During a press conference in Dublin on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said his government hasn’t received all the details of the German criminal case against Mr. Kuznetzov.
“The relevant authorities of our countries will get in touch, and when we receive more details, we will probably be able to respond. For now, it is too early to speak,” Mr. Zelenskyy said, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
The indictment has caused a diplomatic headache for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. His country is one of Ukraine’s largest suppliers of military and financial assistance in its war against Russia. But officials insist that the criminal case being brought by independent federal prosecutors won’t alter Berlin’s support of Kyiv.
“Regardless of the results of the process, we [Germany] will continue to support Ukraine in its defensive struggle against Russia’s illegal war of aggression for as long as necessary, as the chancellor has repeatedly said,” Wolfgang Buchner, a government spokesman, told Ukinform, Ukraine’s state-owned news agency.
Contact the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.